1960February–May 1960 · Downtown Nashville

Nashville sit-ins

Nashville's courthouse and city hall, where marchers confronted the mayor over segregation in April 1960 — Photo: euthman. CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Trained in nonviolence by James Lawson, students from Nashville's Black colleges began sitting in at downtown lunch counters in February 1960, facing beatings and mass arrests. After their lawyer Z. Alexander Looby's home was bombed on 19 April, some 3,000 marched silently to City Hall, where Diane Nash got the mayor to agree segregation was wrong. Counters opened in May; several leaders helped found SNCC.

Sites

Site 1: Civil Rights Room, Nashville Public LibraryArchive room overlooking a sit-in corner, with a symbolic lunch counter.Map ↗
Site 2: Former Woolworth store, Fifth Avenue NorthRestored dime store where students sat at the lunch counter.Map ↗
Site 3: Witness Walls, Public SquareConcrete walls cast with images of the protests, beside the courthouse.Map ↗

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