The Nashville Sit-Ins were among the earliest non-violent direct action campaigns that targeted Southern racial segregation in the 1960s. The sit-ins, which lasted from February 13 to May 10, 1960, sought to desegregate downtown lunch counters in Nashville, Tennessee. The protests were coordinated by the Nashville Student Movement and the Nashville Christian Leadership Council (NCLC), primarily consisting of students from Fisk University, Baptist Theological Seminary, and Tennessee State University. Diane Nash and John Lewis, who were both students at Fisk University, emerged as the major leaders of the local movement.
On February 13, 1960, twelve days after the Greensboro, North Carolina sit-ins began, Nashville college students entered Kress (now K-Mart), Woolworth’s, and McClellan stores at 12:40 p.m. After making their purchases, the students sat down at the lunch counters. Store owners initially refused to serve the students and closed the counters, claiming it was their “moral right” to determine whom they would or would not serve. The students continued the sit-ins over the next three months, expanding their targets to include lunch counters at the Greyhound and Trailways bus terminals, Grant’s Variety Store, Walgreens Drugstore, and major Nashville department stores, Cain-Sloan and Harvey.
The first violent response to the protests came on February 27, which James Lawson, Jr., another protest leader called “big Saturday.” The protesters that day were attacked by a white group opposing desegregation. The police arrested eighty-one protesters but none of the attackers. Those arrested were found guilty of disorderly conduct. They all decided to serve time in jail rather than pay fines.
As racial tension grew in Nashville, Mayor Ben West appointed a biracial committee to investigate segregation in the city. Despite the committee’s numerous attempts at a compromise, the students declared that they would accept nothing less than the acknowledgement of their rights to sit at the store lunch counters along with white customers. On April 5, the committee suggested that the counters be divided into black and white sections. The NCLC and the Nashville Student Movement rejected the proposal, arguing that segregation of the counters was no better than black exclusion from them.
On April 19, a bomb destroyed the home of Z. Alexander Looby, the defense attorney representing many of the protesters. The bombing of Lobby’s home triggered a mass march to city hall where 2,500 protesters demanded answers from Mayor West. Diane Nash pointedly asked Mayor West if it was wrong for a citizen of Nashville to discriminate against his fellow citizens because of his race or skin color. The mayor admitted that it was wrong, giving the students an important symbolic victory in their campaign. Nash then asked the mayor if the lunch counters in Nashville should be desegregated. They mayor said they should.
After weeks of secret negotiations between merchants and protest leaders, an agreement was finally reached during the first week of May. On May 10, six downtown stores opened their lunch counters to black customers for the first time; the customers arrived in groups of two or three during the afternoon and were served without incident. With that agreement, Nashville became the first major southern city to begin desegregating public facilities. The Nashville campaign became a model for other civil rights protests in the 1960s and 1970s.
Megathreads and spaces to hang out:
- 📀 Come listen to music and Watch movies with your fellow Hexbears nerd, in Cy.tube
- 💖 Come talk in the New Weekly Queer thread
- 🔥 Read and talk about a current topics in the News Megathread
- ⚔ Come talk in the New Weekly PoC thread
- ✨ Talk with fellow Trans comrades in the New Weekly Trans thread
reminders:
- 💚 You nerds can join specific comms to see posts about all sorts of topics
- 💙 Hexbear’s algorithm prioritizes comments over upbears
- 💜 Sorting by new you nerd
- 🌈 If you ever want to make your own megathread, you can reserve a spot here nerd
- 🐶 Join the unofficial Hexbear-adjacent Mastodon instance toots.matapacos.dog
Links To Resources (Aid and Theory):
Aid:
Theory:
I really envy people who miss their parents cooking, when i started cooking on my own i realized how lazy and awful my folks cooking was. Like I realized that they have never marinated anything ever, wtf
Lemme guess, you're a poor kkkrakkka?
Yeah i grew up poor. Im doing okay as an adult thank god
I remember trying my ex-gfs grandmas tamales after her hyping them up for a week amd they were complete ass. I realized that for some people food reminds them of love, which they had for their grandma.
I had a good tamale years after the fact but i spent a long time thinking they were shit. The best mexican food i had was fairly recently in the middle of nowhere despite growing up with mexicans.
Oh, okay, that's sad (I was kinda half-joking when I said that...)
So, you're not white. I must be mistaken...
No im white just grew up around non whites for the most part
Sometimes I make food for people and some of them have clearly grown up with certified kkkrakkka cooking. "Holy SHIT what did you put in this?????" my brothers in christ, you would call an exorcist, god, and the president if you knew how much salt I put in this shit. You are eating nothing but salt and butter and a big pinch of love for all working peoples. Shoutouts to my grandma for indoctrinating me with the immortal science of salting your shit. I remember when my aunts were helping her cook and someone would say "jesus christ grandma don't put so much salt in it, that's really unhealthy" and she'd go "oh heavens, you're right, we wouldn't want it to taste like anything". Grandma is a real one.
I dont think i use too much salt, my partner likes to just throw stuff in and not measure and honestly I think thats fine if youve been in the kitchen alot but they havent lol
My coworkers wife can cook her cultures food insanely well. she told me she eyeballs everything or will like know to put in certain ingredients if it's missing shit. Thats so cool to me
I haven't even moved out yet and I've just barely started preparing basic meals for myself, but I've already been thinking this for years.
Like, occasionally they make something really tasty like marinating the fuckin chicken or whatever. And it's like holy crap, why don't they cook like this all the time!? But they just want to eat their stupid unseasoned chicken and gross microwaved frozen veggie mix day after day. I don't understand them. Like they possess the knowledge of how to make really good food and it's not exactly that much more expensive to do so, but they... just don't. And to me, eating something really tasty is like the highlight of the day.
I had a lot of problems at home so it was them being white, but also just the food being good or figuring out how to make it good was never a priority for them.
When my dad would cook hed always want to make some weird foreign shit and it was never good lol, appreciate the effort though. I learned from him that you need to be patient in the kitchen and try ideas a few times before it gets edible.