Civil rights history course continues to raise community awareness of historic era
Janel Shoun |
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Rev. James Lawson, a leader in the civil rights movement in Nashville, is just one example of the historic figures Lipscomb, Fisk, American Baptist and the public library have brought to local audiences in the past year.
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The course, “Voices from the Movement: Then and Now,” and its surrounding community events were a great success last year, not only bringing new insights to hundreds of people throughout the season, but also profoundly affecting the lives of the students in the course, which brought together 11 Lipscomb and 18 ABC students to explore the history of the civil rights movement and discuss how its lessons apply to Nashville today.
“I got an e-mail from a student over the summer saying, ‘I want you to know that I still think about this class and it is still changing the way I think about life,’” said Dr. Richard Goode, professor in the Department of History, Politics and Philosophy at Lipscomb.
The students took it upon themselves to meet together for projects, attend church together and hang out as friends, Goode said. “We really got an inkling of the ‘Beloved Community,’” said Goode, referring to the phrase coined by the Rev. James Lawson, a Vanderbilt University divinity student in the 1960s who organized the sit-ins that eventually ended racial segregation at Nashville’s lunch counters.
The program coordinators enjoyed another full enrollment for this fall’s course, to be held weekly on the campus of American Baptist College, which played an important role in the history of Nashville’s race relations.
Many of the student leaders who later showed up in history books originally walked the halls of American Baptist College, said Janet Wolf, ABC’s chair of church vocations and co-creator of the class curriculum with Goode. “To be in the place where dreams erupted, where students stayed up late, where they delayed degrees to go out on the streets… that’s American Baptist College, and this class will honor that legacy and reclaim it,” she said.
Nashville became known as the “university of non-violence” because so many historic civil rights leaders were originally taught the precepts here. Last year, the public/private collaborators coordinated to hold two public events and several roundtable discussions for local community and faith leaders to shine a spotlight on Nashville’s historic role.
Last year’s events featured a free reading of the play Ordinary Heroes by Actor’s Bridge Ensemble and Amun Ra Theatre; photographs by Carlton Wilkinson and Harold Lowe; lectures by civil rights activists Rev. Lawson and C.T. Vivian, and music by Charles Neblett and Candie and Guy Carawan, folk singers during the civil rights movement.
This year Fisk, ABC, Lipscomb and the public library will celebrate on Tuesday, Sept. 18, the 50th anniversary of the desegregation of Nashville’s schools with a panel discussion of teachers and students discussing their life experiences during Nashville’s desegregation, begun in 1957, the same year that the Little Rock Nine were famously blocked from attending high school by the Arkansas National Guard.
Moderated by Linda Wynn, lecturer in the history department at Fisk, the panel discussion, held at 5:30 p.m., in the Lewis-Scruggs Center at American Baptist College, 1800 Baptist World Center Drive, will serve as a follow-up to a Sunday, Sept. 16, program of “remembrance and celebration,” organized by local historian John Edgerton, also held at American Baptist College at 4 p.m.
On Sept. 18, Waverly Crenshaw, a student in the late 1950s and now a partner at Waller Lansden attorneys, and two former Nashville public schools teachers, Ola Hudson and Lillie Bowman, will share their remembrances of a time when white teachers were transferred to teach in black schools, when parents feared to send their children to school and when the newspapers were filled with stories of Clinton High School in East Tennessee, which was bombed after being desegregated by ten students.
“I think it’s very important that we not only pause to commemorate the brave actions of the parents, students and teachers in 1957, but also we as a society should never become a tree without roots. Understanding how these brave people stepped out for change in 1957 helps us today to learn how to make positive change occur in our world,” said Wynn.
On Nov. 13, the collaboration will host “Music of the Movement,” where Neblett, the Carawans and Andre Johnson, will discuss the folk music of the time and how it has influenced music today.
“These events are rare opportunities to see, hear and learn from true heroes who changed the course of history,” said Andrea Blackman, coordinator of the Civil Rights Oral History Project at the Nashville Public Library and member of the four-part collaboration. “The speakers will share a glimpse into the past, but will also address what we can do today to build the ‘Beloved Community’ of the future.”
The four-part collaboration of private universities and a public organization, of historically Black colleges and faith-based institutions, is a perfect vehicle to demonstrate that the civil rights history of Nashville does not just affect local African-Americans, said Goode. Learning about these historic conflicts will benefit all of society of any color, gender or background, he noted.
“It changes how we think and engage the subject matter when you have more people in the conversation,” he said. “History isn’t just objects in the past to study. The issues that were relevant then are still relevant today. They may not look the same, but we have to deal with them in the same way.”
For more information on the September and November events contact Janet Wolf at American Baptist College at 687-6901.
Related Links
Historic civil rights leaders share experiences with community, November 2006