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
A Long Road Ahead:
On Tuesday, September 10, news of the bombing of Hattie Cotton kept Patricia Watson and all her classmates out of school for a week. Repairs to the building proceeded on a fast track, and classes resumed there on the 17th, but Patricia Watson had transferred by then to an all-black school.
At Clemons School on the 10th, Joy Smith was back, along with almost all of the five hundred white students. By the time she finished the sixth grade there and moved on to high school, black enrollment had risen substantially.
At Clemons School on the 10th, Joy Smith was back, along with almost all of the five hundred white students. By the time she finished the sixth grade there and moved on to high school, black enrollment had risen substantially.
Caldwell and Bailey schools remained segregated in 1957-58, but not for much longer. At Glenn, Lajuanda Street and Jacqueline Griffith returned the second day and most every day that year; fewer than a hundred white students were present on Tuesday, but within a week, the normal enrollment of five hundred had been attained. Barbara Jean Watson, Marvin Moore, Charles Battles and Cecil Ray Jr. went back to Jones the second day, and three of them remained all year. Erroll Groves and Ethel Mai Carr also returned to Buena Vista on Tuesday, and both would stay there all the way through the sixth grade. |
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Linda McKinley and Willis Lewis, Jr., at Fehr Elementary School, Nashville, TN, September 1957. |
At Fehr, perhaps the most buffeted by protest of all the
schools, the three boys — Charles Ridley, Willis Lewis, and Bobby Cabknor — were
in class on one or more days that week, but all of them, along with Rita Buchanan,
one of the two black girls, eventually transferred. Only Linda Gail McKinley
remained as a trailblazer at Fehr, staying four years. The pictures of her
and her friend Rita, clinging to Linda's mother, Grace McKinley, still capture
the emotion and drama of those momentous days fifty years ago, when the courage
of a handful of unsung heroes marked Nashville's start along the rocky road
up and out of legalized racial segregation.
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One curious footnote from
those initial days of challenge and response should be added. As the
black children and their parents approached the schools each morning,
a few well-dressed strangers — African American men and women,
for the most part, plus two or three whites — quietly fell in step
behind them. They were not relatives, not even acquaintances of the families,
but volunteers called in by several organizations: the local chapters
of the NAACP and the Congress of Racial Equality, the involuntarily segregated "Negro
Parent-Teacher Association," and a few churches. They walked with
dignity in order to witness — simply put, to be present — and to
lend moral support to the ones upon whom the burden of change was falling. |
Linda McKinley and Rita Buchanan hold hands as Grace McKinley walks ahead and supporters walk behind, Nashville, TN, September 1957. |
"It was something positive we could do," recalled
ninety-two-year-old JohnEtta Hayes modestly, a half-century on. Mrs. Hayes, who
was
later
to serve as the first woman president of the NAACP in Nashville, was photographed
with Grace McKinley on the day of early registration at Fehr School. Linda was
between the two women, holding hands with them. They were all smiling warily
as they walked toward the entrance.
◊ ◊ ◊
The coming of school desegregation to this self-styled Athens of the South amounted to a small beginning, not an end in itself. There would be major conflicts and crises in the years ahead — most notably, the "cross-town busing" controversy of the 1970s. Kelley v. Board of Education, the lawsuit filed in Nashville in 1955, would not be finally settled until 1998. Even now, vestiges of the old inequities spawned by segregation still cast shadows in this city, across the South, and around the nation. The "more perfect Union" remains a work in progress.
But those are stories for another time and place. This one ends here, with eleven little six-year-old children and their parents having secured, by their courage and persistence (and with the support of others), the right to all the educational privileges freely made available to white children — and secured that right not just for themselves, but for all who have come after them. Numerically, theirs was a small gain — but symbolically, it was immeasurable.
With the passage of time, accounts of their valor have faded, and the story of school desegregation in Nashville has slipped into the cobwebbed corners of history. But it is never too late to recover it and to remember the children, for the edification and inspiration of us all. The fewer who stand and deliver, the greater their contribution becomes. |
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Mother and children leaving Glenn School, Nashville, TN, September 1957. |
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
