"I went into my cocoon"
Sit-in participant remembers coping with fear

Peggy Alexander was a student at Fisk University in 1960, when she took part in Nashville's sit-in movement. More than four decades later she was interviewed as part of the Nashville Public Library's Civil Rights Oral History Project. Among the things she talked about was what she thought about while sitting at the Nashville lunch counters, being yelled at and harassed by people opposed to integration.
Matthew Walker, Peggy Alexander [later Latson], Diane Nash and Stanley Hemphill become the first blacks to be served at a lunch counter in Nashville. A few minutes after this photo was taken, Walker was struck by a counterprotester so hard that he lost a tooth.
PHOTO: Associated Press
"I wouldn't turn around and look behind me. I wouldn't look to the side. I sort of went into my cocoon of putting myself at peace, focusing on my purpose, focusing on the bigger picture. I said to myself, 'I'm here so that no matter what happens tomorrow, no matter whether we're successful or not, I am able to show America that this one person sitting here does not agree with life as it is and is not happy with the way things are.

"And so it's hard for me to remember exactly what went on. I do remember the day Matthew Walker got his tooth knocked out, because there were only four of us and we had supposedly reached the stage of victory. The decision had already been made that the counters would be desegregated, and the four of us went that day to the bus station where we knew we would be served. There was a famous picture taken of us that day, and everything was going very well, or so we thought. Despite that some people came in and -- POW -- knocked Matt's tooth out.

". . . If I have any disappointment, it's that on Martin Luther King's birthday and during Black History Month and when we talk about the history of blacks that so little is said about non-violence. I think we've lost that, and think we fail to teach that. If there's one thing we need to get back to, it's to let everyone know where non-violence came from, what the theory of non-violence is, and how the movement was able to put all this into action."
(Peggy Alexander Latson is a retired assistant principal living in Plantation, Florida.)
COPYRIGHT -- the Civil Rights Oral History Collection of the Nashville Public Library, Special Collections Division. Click here to be taken to its website.

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