Among all the vivid examples of Jim Crow–style segregation in the South, some of the ugliest were the stark white and colored signs paired with shiny or shabby restrooms and water fountains. As powerful symbols of the racial divide, these markers were all the more chilling for being so casual. And yet, for someone strolling through downtown Nashville in the 1940s, those signs were not always there, forcing the visitor to chart a far more bewildering path. No white or colored designations adorned the restrooms in the state capitol, for example. Nor were there any in the post office,...

Someone standing by Nashville’s state capitol in the pre–World War II era could easily visualize at least some dimensions of the city’s segmentation. The building towered over downtown Nashville and the tall hills overlooking the rest of the city and the Cumberland River. Although the vista’s effect might be lessened somewhat by the city’s notoriously smoke-choked air, the rare clear day permitted a visitor looking due north to watch the Cumberland snaking up and away, bending to the west in an upside-down U shape that curved around North Nashville. This neighborhood was considered the very heart of African American...

As morning dawned on September 9, 1957, nineteen African American six-year-olds tightly gripped the hands of their elders as they made their way to new and unfamiliar schools. Rocks, spit, and insults cascaded through the air as policemen, protesters, and parents flanked their paths. One white woman in near-hysterics screamed “pull that black kinky hair out” as the schoolchildren passed her. Picket signs at various schools read “god is the author of segregation,” “keep our white schools white,” “the mayor is a rat,” and “what god has put asunder let not man put together.” As one black preacher escorted some...

The shattering sound of crashing plates in February 1960 signaled that something unusual was happening in downtown Nashville. “They must have dropped two thousand dollars’ worth of dishes that day. It was almost like a cartoon,” remembers student leader Diane Nash. “One in particular, she was so nervous, she picked up dishes and she dropped one, and she’d pick up another one, and she’d drop it.” It made for surreal feelings, Nash thought: “It was really funny, and we were sitting there trying not to laugh, because we thought that laughing would be insulting and we didn’t want to create...

On a Sunday in 1961, “John Barnett” decided to worship at a downtown Presbyterian church in “Knoshville, Kennessina.” A black New Englander who had left his church back home to study at seminary, he was happy for the chance “to be a listener instead of a pastor.” Upon entering, Barnett was confronted by a “stocky grizzled-haired man” who demanded that he leave. Shaken, Barnett withdrew, but immediately the minister followed after him, asking for forgiveness and inviting him back inside, where “the stocky usher was waiting belligerently.” Agitated, the usher said, “you’re not bringing him into this church, are you,...

During an early evening in April 1967, as Jefferson Street seethed with unrest, milling groups of African American students watched and occasionally joined in as some of their peers hurled contempt at helmeted riot squads. As police lights cast ominous flickering colors over the scene, a middle-aged African American leader pleaded for calm over a borrowed bullhorn, even as a female student tried to wrest the microphone away from him. Off to one side, a police captain contented himself with an ice cream cone as he watched the adults and students arguing vehemently with each other. In one exchange, an...

Just months after being assaulted with a rock to the head in North Nashville, Edwin Mitchell accepted an invitation to speak before the Nashville Chamber of Commerce in October 1967. It was a fraught moment in Nashville’s racial history given changes slowly becoming visible across the city and, even at a formal event, Mitchell was not willing to mince words. He did carefully caution in his speech that he could not and would not be “speaking for the entire Negro community,” nor would he “wish you to accept me as having those credentials,” given the history of false communication between...

A 1963 New York Herald Tribune article implicitly extolled the white Nashville Way as the reason why Nashville was the “most desegregated city in the South.” The author observed that “one thing [Nashville] cannot abide is unpleasantness. It values peace and quiet as Birmingham, to the south, values separate water fountains and defiance.” Indeed, the writer was quite taken with the difference: “a traveler from Birmingham is struck immediately by the contrasts of Nashville. It takes a day or so to adjust to it. Of course Nashville has had a long history of graciousness while Birmingham has no history at...