Читать книгу Freedom Facts and Firsts - Jessie Carney Smith - Страница 86

In 1958, following the formation of the Nashville Christian Leadership Conference (NCLC) by the Reverend Kelly Miller Smith Sr. and others, African American leaders and students launched an attack on Jim Crow segregation. The NCLC utilized the concept of Christian nonviolence to stage the Nashville sit-in movement and combat racial segregation. The Reverend James Lawson, a devoted adherent of the Gandhi philosophy of direct non-violent protest, trained local residents in the techniques of nonviolence. In November and December of 1959, NCLC leaders and college students staged unsuccessful “test sit-ins” in an attempt to desegregate the lunch counters. Twelve days after the Greensboro, North Carolina, Sit-in, Nashville’s African American students launched their first full-scale sit-ins on February 13, 1960.

Throughout the spring, Nashville students conducted numerous sit-ins and held steadfastly to the concept of Christian nonviolence. Shortly before Easter, African Americans boycotted downtown stores, creating an estimated 20 percent loss in business revenues. As racial tension escalated, segregationists lashed out at civil rights activists. The April 19 bombing of Z. Alexander Looby’s home—he was the attorney for the students and a city councilman and leading figure in desegregation movements throughout Tennessee—caused thousands of blacks and some whites to silently march to City Hall, where Mayor Ben West conceded to Diane Nash of Fisk University that lunch counters should be desegregated.

On May 10, 1960, Nashville became the first major city to begin desegregating its public facilities. In November of that year, sit-ins resumed as racist practices still continued in most eating establishments and institutionalized racism remained intact. One of the best-organized and disciplined movements in the South, as noted by the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., the Nashville sit-in movement served as a model for future demonstrations against other violations of African American civil rights. Many of the student participants later became leaders in the national struggle for civil rights.

Linda T. Wynn