Walking into History: The Beginning of School Desegregation in Nashville
John Egerton, Nashville, Tennessee
Essay Sections:
Introduction | Brown Comes to Tennessee | The Nashville Plan | Resistance and Resolve | September 9 |
The Witching Hour | The Turning Point | A Long Road Ahead | Appendices | Recommended Resources
The Witching Hour | The Turning Point | A Long Road Ahead | Appendices | Recommended Resources
The Nashville Plan:
Anticipating Judge Miller's almost certain approval of
a grade-a-year desegregation plan to begin in September 1957, Superintendent
Bass was by then convinced that the time for change was at hand. The
Supreme
Court had twice ruled unanimously against segregation, yet three years
of local argumentation had yielded nothing; if the Nashville school board
sought
any further delay, Bass reasoned, they would have both the plaintiffs
and the courts to answer to. On the other hand, pushing ahead on desegregation
was bound to stir the wrath of many white parents, and perhaps draw militant
outside forces to the city.
 |
Three years earlier, it had been moderate citizens of both races who seemed to be at the forefront of desegregation discussions, and the talk was mostly about when and how court orders should be honored. But over the months and years, the debate subtly shifted. People in the middle were being pulled to one side or the other, where the most extreme choices inevitably came down to just two: complete integration now, or total segregation forever. The former had no vocal constituency; the latter was being pushed hard by the now-familiar phalanx of radical white supremacists, all energized by a feeling of certitude that time was on their side. |
The parents of six-year-old Sinclair Lee, Jr., lead their son to Glenn Elementary, Nashville, TN, September 1957. |
William Bass was uncomfortable with
such all-or-nothing polarity. His way was consensus — bringing people
together, building mutual respect, and giving opponents room to work out
their differences
in a spirit of fairness and equity. Bass was looking ahead to his retirement
at the end of 1957. His successor, already chosen, was to be Assistant Superintendent
W. H. Oliver, who also served as principal of East High School. Through the
fall and spring of the 1956-57 school year, the two men patiently guided
the school board toward approval of a process by which desegregation would
begin in the first grade in 1957 and extend to all twelve grades by 1968.
Certain
white elementary schools would be told to admit any black first graders who
lived within their zones. (Nothing was said about how rezoning would affect
the black schools to which those children would have gone, or about whites
moving
into black schools, or about other biracial elementary school zones not made
a part of the desegregation plan.)
To further soften the impact of these gradual changes, a liberal transfer policy would be introduced, allowing students whose race was in the minority in their newly assigned schools to opt for a majority-status alternative — that is, choose to remain in segregation. (This provision was later disallowed by the federal courts.)
With the only black member of the board, attorney Coyness Ennix, casting the lone dissenting vote, this plan was approved and presented to Judge Miller in the spring of 1957. The NAACP attorneys called it "completely inadequate," noting among other things that it would deny any relief to Robert Kelley and the named plaintiffs, because all were in higher grades. Judge Miller, while expressing reservations of his own, reluctantly ordered the plan to be implemented in September 1957, with more specific adjustments to be made later. The plaintiffs appealed, but no delay was permitted. (Two years later, the U.S. Supreme Court would give its tacit consent to the Nashville "stair-step" plan; by then, it had become a model of sorts for some other southern school systems seeking a minimal approach to desegregation that would satisfy the court's "all deliberate speed" standard.)
To further soften the impact of these gradual changes, a liberal transfer policy would be introduced, allowing students whose race was in the minority in their newly assigned schools to opt for a majority-status alternative — that is, choose to remain in segregation. (This provision was later disallowed by the federal courts.)
With the only black member of the board, attorney Coyness Ennix, casting the lone dissenting vote, this plan was approved and presented to Judge Miller in the spring of 1957. The NAACP attorneys called it "completely inadequate," noting among other things that it would deny any relief to Robert Kelley and the named plaintiffs, because all were in higher grades. Judge Miller, while expressing reservations of his own, reluctantly ordered the plan to be implemented in September 1957, with more specific adjustments to be made later. The plaintiffs appealed, but no delay was permitted. (Two years later, the U.S. Supreme Court would give its tacit consent to the Nashville "stair-step" plan; by then, it had become a model of sorts for some other southern school systems seeking a minimal approach to desegregation that would satisfy the court's "all deliberate speed" standard.)
As September approached, the school board and administration under Bass and Oliver seemed prepared for this first small step toward racial equity. They heard encouraging words from Governor Clement and Mayor West, who never wavered in their commitment to the rule of law. The all-white and segregation-minded Tennessee legislature passed several bills aimed at blocking desegregation, but most were either vetoed by Clement or declared unconstitutional by the courts. For all their vocal railing against any change in the racial status quo, the state lawmakers could find no effective means of stalling court-ordered desegregation, and neither the Nashville city council nor the Tennessee delegation in Congress actively attempted to prevent Nashville or any other school system in the state from going ahead with its plans. |
 |
Lajuanda Street and a new classmate at Glenn Elementary, Nashville, TN, September 1957. |
Until late in July, there seemed to be a general expectation around the city
that Nashville's schools — and the community at large — would eventually accept
the judgment of the federal courts and quietly lower the barrier of segregation.
To be sure, a great many white residents still objected to such a change,
and enough of them had expressed their displeasure in public to leave the
impression that they spoke for a majority. Those who favored desegregation,
white and
black
alike, were less vocal, making their numbers appear smaller. There were no
opinion polls to measure public sentiment — but the courts had spoken, and the
political and educational leadership had quietly accepted that judgment.
With the opening
of schools just six weeks off, change seemed inevitable.
Nashville was almost 180 years old in 1957 (its founding had coincided with that of the American nation), and it wore its age with a certain patrician pride. Early in its frontier history, an admiring local citizen had dubbed it "the Athens of the West" (later remapped to the South by the Civil War and other changes of geography and perspective). Its leaders liked that image; it called to mind a place of reasonable and civic-minded people, of moderately progressive conservatives. In the war of rebellion, Nashville had spread its sympathies in both directions, sending hundreds of its own residents, white and black, to fight and die for the Union Blue as well as the Confederate Gray. It was not a place of extremes, but of the center. Had they been left to their own devices, some Nashvillians apparently believed, they could have worked out their racial problems amicably and equitably.
Such an opportunity for compromise and reconciliation never blossomed in the Nashville of that war-wracked era, and in the postwar Reconstruction era and beyond, the dream of full citizenship for former slaves soon turned to dust. Slavery was gone, but so was the promise of economic and political freedom; every southern state passed laws mandating racial segregation in a "separate but equal" society that assured Caucasians of perpetual advantage in every station of life — in political parties, civic agencies, hotels, theaters, trolleys and trains, from hospital rooms to schoolrooms to the workplace and even the graveyard.
But decades later, in the fall of 1957, a new opportunity was at hand. The elusive ideal of racial equality, often glimpsed but rarely grasped in the United States, was once again coming into focus for Nashvillians — and this time, it was going to be reflected in the quietly serious faces of a few brown-skinned six-year-olds. Powerful forces were rallying to one side or the other, for the children or against them. A fundamental principle of American democracy, as interpreted by the nation's highest court, was about to be applied, and Nashville would be an early testing ground — one of the first of the South's cities to put into motion a comprehensive plan for the desegregation of its public schools, and the only one to that date with a strategy of building from the bottom up, one grade at a time.
Nashville was almost 180 years old in 1957 (its founding had coincided with that of the American nation), and it wore its age with a certain patrician pride. Early in its frontier history, an admiring local citizen had dubbed it "the Athens of the West" (later remapped to the South by the Civil War and other changes of geography and perspective). Its leaders liked that image; it called to mind a place of reasonable and civic-minded people, of moderately progressive conservatives. In the war of rebellion, Nashville had spread its sympathies in both directions, sending hundreds of its own residents, white and black, to fight and die for the Union Blue as well as the Confederate Gray. It was not a place of extremes, but of the center. Had they been left to their own devices, some Nashvillians apparently believed, they could have worked out their racial problems amicably and equitably.
Such an opportunity for compromise and reconciliation never blossomed in the Nashville of that war-wracked era, and in the postwar Reconstruction era and beyond, the dream of full citizenship for former slaves soon turned to dust. Slavery was gone, but so was the promise of economic and political freedom; every southern state passed laws mandating racial segregation in a "separate but equal" society that assured Caucasians of perpetual advantage in every station of life — in political parties, civic agencies, hotels, theaters, trolleys and trains, from hospital rooms to schoolrooms to the workplace and even the graveyard.
But decades later, in the fall of 1957, a new opportunity was at hand. The elusive ideal of racial equality, often glimpsed but rarely grasped in the United States, was once again coming into focus for Nashvillians — and this time, it was going to be reflected in the quietly serious faces of a few brown-skinned six-year-olds. Powerful forces were rallying to one side or the other, for the children or against them. A fundamental principle of American democracy, as interpreted by the nation's highest court, was about to be applied, and Nashville would be an early testing ground — one of the first of the South's cities to put into motion a comprehensive plan for the desegregation of its public schools, and the only one to that date with a strategy of building from the bottom up, one grade at a time.
Essay Sections:
Introduction | Brown Comes to Tennessee | The Nashville Plan | Resistance and Resolve | September 9 |
The Witching Hour | The Turning Point | A Long Road Ahead | Appendices | Recommended Resources
The Witching Hour | The Turning Point | A Long Road Ahead | Appendices | Recommended Resources
