A Change Gonna Come

Photos courtesy of THE TENNESSEAN

50 years ago this week, change, slow to be sure, but change neverthless, started to come to Nashville, as the lunch counter sit-ins of the civil rights movement began here.

Nashville, along with Greensboro, NC, were among the first cities involved. The efforts, largely led by local black college students, met strong white resistance, especially at first, and many of the sit-in protestors went to jail (some more than once) for their efforts to achieve the simple social justice of being able to buy a hamburger or a coke at a downtown drug store lunch counter or at the bus station.

The sit-in movement began about 6 years before Up With People first came to Nashville and Sing-Out South began. By that time, some positive change had been achieved both in Nashville and across the nation. Neverthless, it is interesting and instructive to look back on the Nashville experience with the sit-in demonstrations. Here, courtesy of WNPT's "Memories of Nashville" program and YouTube is such a retrospective....

But, as we said, progress and change was slow to come to Nashville, as witnessed by this second segment of WNPT's "Memories of Nashville" concerning Centennial Park and its public pool, which was closed, along with the rest of the city's municipal pools, rather than desegregate them (and yes,that is my voice and face you will see from time to time in this segment of the show)...

It was into this emotionally charged, uncertain, but slowly changing social environment that Up With People came to Nashville and Sing-Out South was born in 1966. More on the role Sing-Out South played in becoming one of the city's first racially-integrated groups in our next posting.

If you have memories of these times that you'd like to share, please feel free to leave them below or send to me by e-mail (pat.nolan@dvl.com) and I can share them here.