Remembering the Nashville sit-ins

On June 19, the nation celebrates Juneteenth to commemorate the emancipation of enslaved African Americans after the Civil War. While Juneteenth was only recently made into a federal holiday, there was a resurgence in Juneteenth celebrations during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 60s.

This special extended episode of This Is Nashville focuses on local civil rights efforts, namely the downtown sit-ins.

At 12:40 p.m. on February 13, 1960, Black college students sat down at lunch counters in downtown Nashville and asked to be served. They sat in silent protest against the segregation at the city’s lunch counters, but were met with with racial slurs and abuse.

John Lewis, who would go on to become an icon of the civil rights movement and later a U.S. representative, was arrested for the first time at Woolworth and would spend weeks in jail along with dozens of fellow activists. By May, six of the downtown lunch counters began serving Black customers.

These sit-ins marked a turning point in the struggle for racial equality in Nashville, the South and the country at large. In this episode, we hear from three Nashvillians participated in the sit-ins.

Guests:

• King Hollands, civil rights activist

• Frankie Henry, civil rights activist

• Professor Gloria McKissack, activist and educator at Tennessee State University

Related reading: 

• This Is Nashville: The Woolworth building is a key civil rights site. Preserving that history has been fraught with uncertainty.

• WPLN: Diane Nash says she shares her Presidential Medal of Freedom with everyone who ‘sacrificed so much for the cause’

• This Is Nashville: Exploring the legacy of Nashville’s Freedom Riders