History of Tennessee - Civil Rights Movement and King Assassination

Civil Rights Movement and King Assassination

Tennessee played an important and prominent role in the struggle for African-American civil rights. Many national civil rights leaders, such as Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. received training in methods of nonviolent protest at the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee. The methods which Gandhi had used were taught here.

In the spring of 1960, after decades of segregation, Tennessee's Jim Crow laws were challenged by an organized group of Nashville college students from Fisk University, American Baptist Theological Seminary, and Vanderbilt University. The students, led by Jim Farmer, John Lewis, and ministers of local African-American churches, mastered methods of non-violent protest in anticipation of a planned and concerted effort to desegregate Nashville's downtown lunch counters through a series of sit-ins. Although many were harassed and beaten by white vigilantes and arrested by the Nashville police, none of the students retaliated with violence.

The Nashville sit-ins reached a turning point when the house of Z. Alexander Looby, a prominent African-American attorney and leader, was bombed. Although no one was killed, thousands of protesters spontaneously marched to Nashville City Hall to confront Mayor Ben West. The mayor had offered only weak half-measures and vacillated toward segregation. Meeting the mass of protesters outside city hall, West informally debated with them and concluded by conceding that segregation was immoral. The bombing, the march, and Mayor West's stunning statement helped convince downtown lunch counters to desegregate. Although segregation and Jim Crow were by no means over, the episode served as one of the first successful events of nonviolent protest, and as a significant example to the rest of the nation.

The leadership, activism and moral arguments of African Americans in the Civil Rights Movement across the South gained passage of the national Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. African Americans regained ordinary civil rights and the power to exercise their voting rights. Voting rights for all were protected by provisions of the Voting Rights Act.

In contrast to the successes of the movement in Tennessee, the 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in Memphis was perceived as symbolic of hatreds in the state. King was in the city to support a strike by black sanitary public works employees of AFSCME Local 1733. The city quickly settled the strike on favorable terms to the employees. African-American communities and admirers of King across the nation were shaken to grief and despair by the murder. Riots and civil unrest erupted in African-American areas in numerous cities across the country, resulting in widespread injuries and millions of dollars in property damages.