John Egerton, Walking into History: The Beginning of Desegregation in Nashville; Southern Spaces

Walking into History: The Beginning of School Desegregation in Nashville

John Egerton, Nashville, Tennessee

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Joe Casey, a young patrolman in his fifth year on the force, got home after midnight from his twelve-hour shift in the Fehr School neighborhood. It had been a long day, and a rough night. As was his habit, he put away his hat and holster on the high shelf of the closet by the front door, where his pistol would be safely out of the sight and reach of his young children. Then, as he was walking through the living room toward the kitchen, an explosive shockwave blew him like a wooden toy against the far wall.

Officials survey the wreckage of Hattie Cotton Elementary School, Nashville, TN, September 1957.

A block away, billows of black smoke rolled up from the east wing of Hattie Cotton School. Casey retrieved his gun and dashed out the door. A light rain was falling as he and others from the neighborhood arrived at the scene. Soon a patrol car roared up, lights flashing, and then a siren announced the approach of a fire engine. Whoever had placed the explosives (probably a one hundred-stick case of dynamite, investigators later surmised) and ignited them from a safe distance had long since disappeared.

A stopped electric clock in the school had recorded the precise time of the blast — 12:33. Less than ten minutes after that, two officers who had been on a stakeout to monitor Kasper's movements entered his temporary residence on Scott Avenue, less than a mile from the bombed school. Armed with a warrant that he had sworn out earlier, based on Kasper's Monday activities, Constable Floyd Peek and his partner rousted Kasper out of bed and took him to the downtown police station, where he was charged with disturbing the peace. A night court judge ordered him held without bond.

Chief Hosse, awakened within minutes of the Cotton blast, had given the order for Kasper to be picked up. On previous occasions, lawyers and bail bondsmen had managed to spring the gangly agitator from jail, but now a new strategy was in force: As soon as his bond was met for one charge, he was hit with another, and another — a total of four that Tuesday morning, the last being a ticket for parking his car in a restricted area. Throughout the week, Kasper was passed back and forth between state and local courtrooms and jails. One way or another, it became clear, he was going to remain behind bars for the time being.

An officer displays a clock stopped at the time of the bomb blast, Nashville, TN, September 1957.

Well over half of the city's police officers were in the station when Hosse walked in at 6:30 for the morning roll call. "This has gotten beyond integration," he said, anger rising in his voice. "These people who are following Kasper around have turned violent, blowing up our schools, destroying our property. The law must be enforced, regardless of who is violating it. We've got to get the job done! How many of you are ready to go out there and do it?" Every officer raised his hand.

Straight from the station house, police units fanned out to all eight of the schools on the desegregation list. They set up roadblocks to keep cruising cars at least a block away, and only parents with children would be allowed to walk past. A few Kasper brigades, hoping to gain momentum from the bombing and the current of fear arising from it, first encountered the barricades at about 7:15 at Caldwell School, where the only three black applicants had been denied admission the previous day. An aggressive band of about a hundred whites pressed up to the barricade, seemingly intent on generating a popular force that would keep the school all-white. Suddenly, they were encircled by motorcycle patrolmen, and a paddy wagon rolled up to receive any who chose to remain belligerent. Ten did; to the shocked cries of their families, they were subdued and driven away to jail. Those who remained grew quiet. No other disturbances were reported at any of the desegregated schools during the day.

In addition to Kasper, several other men suspected of involvement in the bombing had been picked up by nine a.m. By the time school was out and the children had all gone home without incident, a total of thirty white males had been arrested and either released on bail or bound over, like Kasper, to face additional legal proceedings.

The segregationist strategy of using violence to generate more white resistance was having the opposite effect. Earlier, there had been a semblance of unity among the various groups — but some of them, apparently, were not willing to resort to violence, especially if it carried with it the danger of public exposure. It was one thing to be militantly opposed to racial equality, but it was something else altogether to commit violent acts — and face the personal consequences of doing so. Ironically, when the bomb went off, the open revolt of the racist forces was over.

Arrested, John Kasper shields himself from photographers, Nashville, TN, September 1957.

During the morning, Criminal Court Judge Charles Gilbert showed deep indignation as he instructed the county grand jury to investigate the bombing and bring "the midnight assassins" to justice. Noting that he had "lived in this peaceful community most of my life," Gilbert said he "never dreamed or imagined a horrible thing like this" could ever happen. The question at hand now, he told the jurors, "is not whether we are to have integration or segregation. The question now is, Are we to have a reign or terrorism and anarchy or are we to have law and order?"

The afternoon edition of the Nashville Banner displayed a front page editorial by its arch-conservative publisher, James M. Stahlman, characterizing John Kasper as "a lawless renegade interloper" and "an uninvited evangel of mischief [who] has sown the malevolent seed for this harvest of terrorism." Stahlman put up a $1,000 reward for information leading to prosecution of the dynamiters; the state and other parties soon boosted the amount to $7,000. The Tennessee Federation for Constitutional Government, having previously worked hand in glove with Kasper, formally released its grip. One of its local officers, Jack Kershaw, said he might "join Mr. Stahlman in making a reward offer" and added, "Kasper is held up by the carpetbag press [the Tennessean, presumably] as being typical" of the white opposition to racial equality. But, said Kershaw emphatically, the New Jersey extremist "is not a symbol of Southern resistance."

On Friday, Kasper was indicted by the Davidson County Grand Jury on a state charge of inciting a riot, and was bound over for trial in criminal court. No one, it seemed, any longer wished to see him and his rebellious companions roaming free out in public. School officials asked Federal Judge William Miller — and Miller promptly agreed — to issue an order restraining twelve named individuals, Kasper foremost among them, from interfering in any way with desegregation in Nashville. The investigation into the bombing was proceeding in secrecy, with state and federal officials being called in by the city police to assist. Six men were in custody in connection with the crime.

John Kasper in police custody, Nashville, TN, September 1957.

Newspapers across the country, network television, and magazines such as Time and Newsweek gave Nashville even-handed but unwelcome exposure as "the other" trouble spot, along with Little Rock, in the South's excruciating encounter with social reform. On the whole, the Tennessee capital came off looking reasonably good — especially in contrast to most other cities in the region, where school desegregation, even on a scale as modest as Nashville's, was still a few years away. Nevertheless, a school bombing was certainly the wrong reason to be the talk of the nation — and, had it not been for Little Rock, the exposure might have been much more extensive.

The political miscalculation of Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus, a Democrat, and the inevitable response of President Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, brought about a confrontation of historic proportions in 1957. The century-old debate about national authority versus states' rights — a conflict decided but not settled by the outcome of the Civil War — was renewed with vigor by Brown v. Board of Education, and all the battlefields to follow. Little Rock was among the first. What began as a local issue quickly ballooned to state, national, and international proportions. Today, the Little Rock Nine — black students who faced the wrath of white mobs at Central High School — are remembered in the history books, on television, and in the movies. Type in "Little Rock Nine" on the search line of the Google website and you will find over eleven million sources listed.

But the sixteen black first graders who were admitted to six previously all-white elementary schools in Nashville on September 9, 1957, did not long remain in the public eye. Eleven returned on the second day, after the bombing of Hattie Cotton, and eleven would remain in desegregated schools all year. There would be no further disturbances. Before September ended, the heavy thunder of late-summer protest had given way to placid autumn schooldays unmarred by hot disputes over race. Even as the Little Rock crisis escalated to a high-stakes showdown, Nashville was learning that recovery from trauma, followed by limited success and a predictable normality, was not news and not history — it was just the way things were supposed to be. And so it happened that the little trailblazers of desegregation, along with their white classmates, eventually slipped quietly back into the anonymity of childhood.

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