Freedom Facts and Firsts. Jessie Carney Smith
of the NAACP, became involved in that organization’s reaction to the violence in East St. Louis. He was present when a number of organizations met at St. Philips Church in New York City to plan protest strategies. The group rejected the idea of a mass protest meeting in favor of a Silent Protest Parade.
The idea of a silent parade was first raised at the NAACP’s Amenia, New York, Conference in August 1916 by Oswald Garrison Villard, when the association considered a protest for the rights of blacks. Now Johnson remembered Villard’s call and suggested a silent parade to protest the current racial crisis in East St. Louis. As the NAACP’s executive committee planned the march, they agreed that it would be an activity involving New York City’s black citizens rather than the work of the association. Then a large committee comprised of pastors of leading churches and influential men and women was formed. The parade down 5th Avenue moved from 57th Street to Madison Square and brought out 9,000 to 10,000 blacks who marched silently to what Johnson called “the sound only of muffled drums.” Children, some less than six years old and dressed in white, led the procession. Women—some of them aged—dressed in white followed, and men—some also aged—in dark suits brought up the rear. The marchers carried protest banners and posters proclaiming the purpose of the demonstration. The protesters also distributed circulars to the crowds that explained why they marched. “We march because we are thoroughly opposed to Jim Crow cars, … segregation, discrimination, disfranchisement, lynching, and the host of evils that are forced on us” is an example of what they displayed. Of the affair, Johnson wrote in his auto-biography, “The streets of New York have witnessed many strange sites, but, I judge, never one stranger than this; certainly, never one more impressive. The parade moved in silence and was watched in silence. Among the watchers were those with tears in their eyes.”
The NAACP stages a Silent Protest Parade in New York City on July 28, 1917 (Fisk University).
Jessie Carney Smith
Nashville Sit-ins (1959–1961)
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
Nashville Student Movement
An outgrowth of the Nashville Christian Leadership Council (NCLC), which was founded by the Reverend Kelly Miller Smith on January 18, 1958, the Nashville Student Movement (NSM) produced a cadre of leaders in the modern Civil Rights Movement. These leaders included, but were not limited to Marion Barry, James Bevel, John Lewis, Diane J. Nash, Bernard Lafayette Jr., the Reverends James Lawson, and C.T. Vivian, among others. They actively participated and provided leadership in national civil rights organizations, including the Congress of Racial Equality, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, as well as leadership in several local efforts across the southeast to end racial discrimination. In keeping with the SCLC, of which NCLC was an affiliate, the Nashville Student Movement adhered to Martin Luther King Jr.’s “beloved community” credo and to the precept of a city without a color line.
The non-violent resister must be willing to accept suffering without retaliation and to exchange love for hate of the opponent.
The NCLC began holding workshops in March of 1958, the first of which was conducted by Lawson, Glen Smiley, and Anna Holden of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), at Bethel A.M.E. Church. Lawson, a student at Vanderbilt University’s Divinity School, became a member of NCLC’s board and projects committee chair. He and Smiley had frequently lectured and held workshops on black college campuses. Focusing on Christian nonviolence and love, workshop leaders presented the tenets of nonviolence as direct active resistance to violence. At the core of the nonviolence philosophy was the ethic of agape love: loving a neighbor for his own sake and not because of a person’s friendliness. The non-violent resister must be willing to accept suffering without retaliation and to exchange love for hate of the opponent. Nonviolence, according to Lawson, denied the “segregationist power structure of its major weapon: the manipulation of law or law enforcement to keep the Negro in his place.” Later, the workshops were moved to Clark Memorial Methodist Church, which was in proximity to Nashville’s black colleges and universities.
Word of the workshops soon spread to American Baptist College, Fisk University, Meharry Medical College, and Tennessee A&I State University (now Tennessee State University). Students from these educational institutions began attending the workshops. Among those who attended regularly were Peggy Alexander (Fisk), Marion Barry (Fisk), James Bevel (ABC), Angeline Butler (Fisk), Bernard Lafayette, Jr. (ABC), white exchange student Paul LaPrad (Fisk), John Lewis (ABC), and Diane Nash (Fisk). These students, under Lawson’s tutelage, became workshop instructors for others who joined. In October 1959, the NSM formally came into existence with student participation from all four black institutions of higher learning. After having gone through months of training in the tactics and philosophy of direct non-violent resistance, the students were eager to transfer its values and beliefs into practical application.
In November and December of 1959, the NSM, with Nash as chair, and leaders from NCLC conducted experimental sit-ins at local department stores, three months before the Greensboro, North Carolina sit-ins of February 1, 1960, which captured national media attention. However, the Greensboro participants lacked the training, leadership, and organizational structure that the NSM possessed. Prepared to make Nashville a city without a color line, less than two weeks later the NSM began the process of dismantling the city’s restrictive and exclusive racial culture. Although they endured physical abuse and incarceration, the students steadfastly remained committed to the principles of the beloved community and direct non-violent resistance. Considered by King to be one of the best organized and most disciplined student movements, the NSM, with its sit-ins, boycotts, mass demonstrations, and confrontation with then-Mayor Ben West after the bombing of attorney Z. Alexander Looby’s home, helped