Nashville is famous for country music and hot chicken. However, few people know the pivotal role the city played in the nation’s civil rights movement.
After seeing Selma last year, I had a newfound fervor to get conscious, so I started reading Walking with the Wind by the Honorable Rep. John Lewis of Georgia. Y’all, I was shocked to see he had dedicated three chapters of his book to my hometown of Nashville— the city where he attended seminary school and begin his legendary work in the movement. I was so enthralled with this history, I later went on to take Nashville’s civil rights walking tour and even hosted a family reunion here, so they too could experience this history.
Today, I want to highlight that history through excerpts of Congressman Lewis’s book because I’d like you, too, to know about the lesser-known civil rights history of Nashville.
The Man Who Helped Mold the “Model Movement”
Dr. Martin Luther King is attributed with calling Nashville ‘The Model Movement’ because of the strides that were made and its unwavering commitment to nonviolence. And Rev. James Lawson is the man that taught the movement’s nonviolence.
Rev. Lawson grew up in Ohio and at the age of 11 he had an experience that changed his life.
“He slapped a white boy who called him nigger. When he went home and told his mother what had happened, she proceeded to give him his first lecture he had ever heard about the concept of Christian love,” explains Rep. John Lewis in his book.
That aforementioned passage was his conversion experience, and from then on, he was committed to nonviolence.
He walked the talk and in 1951, he refused to register for the draft and filed for conscientious objector status. As a result, the 22-year old spent 14 months in jail for his refusal to serve in the Korean War.
After his release, Lawson went to India as a Methodist missionary and studied the principles of nonviolence developed by Gandhi and his followers.
By 1958, he was traveling all over the South teaching workshops on nonviolence. Later that year, he moved his family to Nashville, enrolled at Vanderbilt’s School of Divinity and started teaching his workshops to the local community.
Nashville’s Nonviolence Training
According to Congressman Lewis, those workshops became the focus of his life.
“Lawson knew—though we had no idea—that we were being trained for a war unlike any this nation had seen up to this time, a nonviolent struggle that would force this country to face its conscience,” says Rep. Lewis.
Lawson taught strategies on how to protect yourself during an attack, such as:
- How to protect your vital organs
- The importance of maintaining eye contact with your assailant
- How to dilute the force of an attack.
But he also instilled the idea of redemptive suffering—as an act of love and forgiveness, the sufferer holds no malice in his heart.
“I rooted non violence in Biblical Thought, Christian Theology, and in Jesus because by that time I was absolutely persuaded of the nonviolent perspective found there. We talk about the grace of God, well the grace of God is non-violent grace. It is not wrath. It is not beating up on people. It is loving people fully, beyond their weaknesses, failures, sins and the rest of it,” explained Rev. Lawson.
The Goal: Desegregate Nashville
As workshop attendance grew, the group began planning to take action. Lawson said the women of Nashville convinced him that shopping in downtown Nashville should be the target of their nonviolence activities.Black shoppers were allowed to spend money in the shops, but not allowed to eat at the lunch counters, use the bathroom of their choice or try on hats that they wished to purchase. And on Feb. 13, 1960, the first sit-in was staged. In just a few months later on May 10, 1960, black customers were served food at the lunch counters of six downtown Nashville stores for the first time.
Nashville’s Impact on The Movement
The Nashville Movement also had a profound impact because it produced many of the field and staff leaders for the Freedom Summer (also known as the Mississippi Summer) and other civil rights campaigns across the South. From the beginning of Nashville’s nonviolence workshops, key players such as Diane Nash, Paul LaPrad, Jim Bevel, Marion Barry, Angeline Butler and John Lewis were in attendance.
The Freedom Rides Almost Ended But Nashville Said No
The second reason Nashville had a profound impact on the movement is that it ensured that the Freedom Rides continued. In 1961, 16 people began the Freedom Rides to New Orleans to test the integration of the waiting rooms for interstate travel as a result of the Supreme Court decision in Boynton vs. Virginia. But in Anniston, Ala., the bus was burned, and in Birmingham the riders were met with a mob. The 16 initial riders were so demoralized and injured that the decision was made to end the ride altogether, and plans were being made to finish the campaign by airplane.
“Because of our steeping in nonviolence, we felt that we could not permit violence to stop a legitimate peaceful operation…even in Birmingham,” said Rev. Lawson.
Congressman Lewis said it this way, “Truth cannot be abandoned, even in the face of pain and injury, even in the face of death.”
There was a struggle in the central planning committee, but the decision was eventually made that the ride would be guided by the Nashville Student Movement. Diane Nash was charged with notifying Dr. Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) that Nashville would continue the Freedom rides.
A Win for Nonviolence
Again in Montgomery, the Freedom Riders were brutalized by a mob. But this time an observer sent by the Kennedy Administration, John Seigenthaler, was knocked unconscious. That galvanized the nonviolent demonstration, and put it back on the front page of the news. Students began flooding in from all over the South and as far north as Washington, D.C. As the rides continued through Mississippi, hundreds were arrested and jailed.
Rev. Lawson was among the first group jailed in Jackson, Miss., but he explained if the rides “had failed in Birmingham, it would have been a critical loss to the development of nonviolence and to the energy of Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and CORE.”
Then and Now
For his role in the civil rights movement, Vanderbilt Divinity School dismissed Rev. Lawson, but by then, the message of nonviolence had taken root in the hearts of too many. In 2006, he returned to Vanderbilt as a visiting professor, and in the ultimate act of forgiveness, he donated a significant portion of his papers to their library. Rev. Lawson continues to teach and speak on nonviolence to this day.
To learn more about Rev. James Lawson and the Nashville Movement, take a look at this video:
Why This Is Important
As we celebrate Black History Month and set our sights on righting the wrongs that STILL befall us, I think its important to learn from the wisdom that surrounds us. Because our living elders have charted the path, seen justice prevail and we cannot afford to let their stories die. There is so much wisdom in their experiences. Let’s be intentional to learn from them.
BMWK: So for this Black History Month, will you join me in talking and listening to our elders? If so, share with us what you’ve learned?