High History 9 - Tennessee History for Kids

HIGH SCHOOL HISTORY
Part Nine: Tennessee's Civil Rights Movement

Signs like this one were once common

Tennessee had its share of important civil rights chapters: some well-known and some forgotten. If you understand what happened in Tennessee, you will better understand what occurred elsewhere, because some of the most important chapters in the Civil Rights Movement happened here.

In this section we will list eight important points about Tennessee and the Civil Rights Movement. But first of all, let's talk about why there needed to be a movement in the first place.

An all-black school in Tennessee in the 1940s...
PHOTO: TN State Library and Archives

Let's say you were living in Tennessee in the 1950s. Would life be different than it is now? When it comes to relations between white people and black people, the answer is yes. In the 1950s, Tennessee had public schools for white students and public schools for black students -- but no integrated schools (schools that included both white and black students). And schools weren't the only things. There were separate parks for whites and blacks. Separate swimming pools. Separate cemeteries. Separate water fountains.

... And an all-white school in Tennessee in the 1940s
PHOTO: TN State Library and Archives

African-Americans generally weren't allowed to sit with whites in public places such as restaurants and movie theaters. In cities, for instance, blacks often had to sit in the balcony in the movie theater.

This system of racial segregation -- defended under the term "separate but equal" -- didn't just ensure that whites and blacks didn't interact very much. It also severely limited the types of jobs African Americans could get and the amount of money African Americans could make. And more often than not, things weren't really "separate but equal." Generally, whites had better-funded schools, nicer libraries, better parks and better access to services.

A hotel on Memphis' Beale Street in the 1940s
PHOTO: Library of Congress

As for Tennessee law, it didn't just tolerate this world of racial segregation; it mandated it. Prior to 1954, state law required separate schools for blacks and whites, while so-called "Jim Crow" laws in states (including Tennessee) required racial segregation in public places such as public buses. Tennessee had a separate Division of Negro Education then that, as the 1941 civics textbook The Tennessean and his Government said, emphasized the "types of vocational training that will best fit negro boys and girls to fill acceptably the positions open to them." Tennessee even had segregated state parks: Both T.O. Fuller State Park in Memphis and Booker T. Washington State Park in Chattanooga were originally created for African Americans.

Because of the extremely important 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education, this situation then changed, and by 1956 Tennessee began integrating its public schools (more on that later).

Ida Wells
PHOTO: University of Chicago Library

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Now onto how and why this situation changed.

Here are eight subjects related to the Civil Rights Movement in Tennessee. You should be able to find more information on each by going to the library or by reading the sources we list below.

1. Everyone seems to think the Civil Rights Movement started in the 1950s and peaked in the 1960s. Not true. As you can read elsewhere on this site, black Tennesseans such as Ida Wells and James Napier were working for the cause of civil rights for African Americans generations before the 1960s. In 1884, for instance, Wells was forcibly removed from the first-class ladies coach on a railroad, and she sued the railroad as a result (70 years before Rosa Parks made national news by doing something rather similar in Montgomery, Alabama). Wells later conducted a written campaign to draw national attention to the problem of lynchings.

2. Tennessee, like every other state. had its share of ugly chapters in terms of race relations. If you haven't read it, refer to the fifth chapter of the high school section of this web site -- the section that talks about lynching.

3. Speaking of mob violence, the first race riot in America after World War II occurred in Maury County, in 1946. It all started with an argument between a black navy veteran (visiting Tennessee from Michigan) and a white shopkeeper. That night there was shooting, fighting and rioting between armed whites and blacks in a part of Columbia known as Mink Slide. Several people were later charged with rioting and attempted murder; the lead attorney who came to Columbia to defend the accused African Americans was Thurgood Marshall (who later became the first black member of the U.S. Supreme Court). Marshall called the Columbia case the most frightening experience he ever had, because he was afraid he was going to be lynched.

Myles Horton
PHOTO: Highlander Research and Education Center

4. Many of the most prominent people in the Civil Rights Movement received training and support from the Highlander Folk School in Grundy County. This private institution, started in the 1930s by Hardin County native Myles Horton, promoted labor unions in its early years (several strikes that occurred in Tennessee in 1937 were traced to this organization). Eventually Horton realized his organization needed to also promote equality between the races, because management often broke strikes by playing black workers against white workers.

The Highlander Folk School's impact on the Civil Rights Movement would be hard to overstate. It was, for years, practically the only place in the South where whites and blacks could sit, relax, and talk about the state of affairs and what they wanted to do to change it. Among the people who attended educational seminars at the Highlander Folk School were Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks. Parks later said that it was at Highlander that she decided she would do something for the movement, although she hadn't yet decided what it would be. A few months later she refused to give up her seat to a white person on a Montgomery bus.

Septima Clark and Rosa Parks at the Highlander Folk School
PHOTO: Highlander Research and Education Center

In 1959, the Highlander Folk School was extensively investigated by the Tennessee General Assembly (many of whose members were upset at the organization for its promotion of labor unions and racial equality). A few months later it was shut down by the Grundy County Sheriff's office because it was in violation of the state law that still forbade integration in private schools.

By the way, the Highlander Folk School still exists -- now as Sevier County's Highlander Research and Education Center.

Myles Horton's battle against segregation was a long one. Click here to read his account of organizing an integrated banquet in Knoxville in 1928.

Students walk to Clinton High School on the first day it was integrated.
PHOTO: Library of Congress

5. In 1956 Clinton High School became the first high school in the south to integrate. The first 12 black students there -- they are sometimes referred to as the Clinton 12 -- remember today that they encountered hostility from other students. But in general, the process would have gone smoother were it not for the fact that people came from all over the country to protest what was occuring (the most notorious of which was segregationist and New Jersey resident John Kasper). Eventually things got violent, and Governor Frank Clement sent in state troopers to restore order.

Bobby Cain was one of the black students who integrated Clinton High School in the fall of 1956. Click here to read what he remembers.

A family in Fayette County is evicted from its home in September 1960.
PHOTO: Ernest Withers

6. The battle over the right to vote forced many people in Fayette and Haywood counties to live in tents for years. Here's what happened:

In the 1950s, two-thirds of the people in Fayette and Haywood counties were black, but practically none of them were allowed to vote. In the spring and summer of 1959, many blacks in the two counties, along with black and white activists from other parts of the country, tried to change this by organizing a voter registration drive. This didn't work either; when black voters turned up to vote in Fayette and Haywood counties on August 1, 1959, some of them were told that they weren't allowed to vote because it was a "white primary." Others were given more creative answers.

Two of the many tents in the "Tent City" located on Shephard Towles' land.
PHOTO: Ernest Withers

At the time, most black people in this part of Tennessee didn't own their own land, but made their living as sharecroppers on white-owned farms, and lived in shacks located on those farms. When blacks filed a lawsuit to challenge the election, many white landowners evicted them from their property. Meanwhile, many white businessmen began refusing to do business with black people -- which meant black people couldn't buy gasoline, buy groceries, or go to the doctor, in Fayette and Haywood counties (many began driving to Memphis for their services at that time.)

One of the many black families living in one of the Tent Cities

One of the few black farmers who owned his land was Shephard Towles. When white landowners began evicting their black sharecropper families, Towles built a series of army surplus tents on his land (near Somerville) for these families to live in. (The tents were donated by people of both races). Within a few weeks there were hundreds of people living in Towles' "tent city." Soon there was another Tent City near the Fayette County town of Moscow.

These families lived in tents for more than a year in conditions we would describe today as inhuman. (Dozens of families shared a single outhouse, for instance.) Fortunately for them, they received food and supplies from a local organization of black leaders known as the Fayette County Civic and Welfare League, from national organizations such as the National Baptist Convention and the NAACP, and from private donors all over the country.

In 1962 a federal court made it clear that landowners could not use economic pressure and evict people as a method of discouraging them to vote. This, however, didn't help the people living in the tent cities, since it didn't force landowners to take their tenants back. It took years for many of the tent city residents to find places to live. A lot of them left the county and the state forever. Blacks in Fayette and Haywood counties weren't really allowed to vote until the national Voting Rights Act of 1965 was enforced in the late 1960s.

John McFerren was one of a small group of Fayette County black leaders who tried to keep the entire black community supplied; click here to read a short excerpt from an interview with his ex-wife, Viola.

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

7. Then there was the sit-in movement, which was most dramatic in Nashville.

In early 1960, after months of careful planning and training, about a hundred students staged sit-in protests at several variety stores in downtown Nashville, including Woolworth's, McClellans, and Walgreen's. What this meant is that black and white students would walk into restaurants and sit in sections that had been designated for white people only. When they weren't served, they sat there all day refusing to leave, often while being yelled at and even slapped by counter protestors. They did this on and off for a while, and at first both Nashville newspapers said the students participating in the sit-ins were wrong to do so.

But public opinion turned. The majority of the African-American community began boycotting downtown retailers in protest. The Tennessean changed its tone and began sympathizing with the students. When Vanderbilt University expelled a divinity student, James Lawson, for his participation and leadership in the movement, many members of its faculty protested, and the school was criticized nationally.

Looby's home the day after it was bombed
PHOTO: Nashville Banner archives; Nashville public library

On April 19, 1960, someone threw a bomb through the window of the home of Z. Alexander Looby, one of Nashville's most prominent black lawyers and a man who had been representing the students. No one was hurt. But later that day, an estimated 3,000 people -- mostly black, but some were white -- marched from Tennessee State University to the courthouse. When they arrived, Nashville Mayor Ben West came out of the courthouse to greet the crowd. One of the student leaders asked him if he would order all lunch counters to be integrated. He said he would. Within a couple of weeks, seven stores opened their lunch counters to all races. Nashville's sit-ins had achieved their goals so peacefully that Martin Luther King later referred to it as a "model movement."

Click here to read what activist Peggy Latson remembers about participating in the sit-ins; here to read what activist Vencen Horsley went through; and here to read what activist Bernard Lafayette remembers about being in jail for taking part in the Civil Rights Movement.

A tank drives by a protestor in Memphis during the sanitation strike of 1968
PHOTO: Wayne State University College of Urban, Labor and Metropolitan Affairs

8. Finally, it was within our borders that the assassination of Martin Luther King occurred, on April 4, 1968.

King was here to show support for Memphis sanitation workers who had gone on strike. (Most, but not all, of those workers were black.) The strike began in February, which meant that trash collection citywide stopped in February. By late March, the strike and the reaction to it led to riots and the occupation of the city by 4,000 National Guardsmen.

King a few weeks before he was shot
PHOTO: Wayne State University College of Urban, Labor and Metropolitan Affairs

These were tense times. On the night of April 3, King made his famous speech at Mason Temple in Memphis, predicting that “I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the mountaintop.” The next day, while he was standing on the balcony of the hotel, he was shot and killed by James Earl Ray. King’s assassination led to riots all over the United States, and in the wake of his death the city of Memphis (under pressure from President Lyndon Johnson) began working with the sanitation workers' labor union.

Click here to read an excerpt from King's "Mountaintop" speech; here to read a first-person account of his assassination; and here to take a virtual tour of the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis.