'Segregation and Democracy Don't Mix': The 1963 Freedom Marches in downtown Nashville
Ain't gonna let nobody turn me round, I'm gonna keep on a-walkin', keep on a-talkin', marchin' down to freedom land.
Ain't gonna let segregaton turn me 'round, turn me 'round …
It was the early spring of 1963, Saturday, March 23, and again on Saturday, March 30, to be exact when a group of anti-segregation demonstrators led by Civil Rights activist John Lewis staged a "Freedom March" through the streets of downtown Nashville protesting the refusal of several businesses to desegregate their lunch counters.
"Everyone must join in the protest against segregation before we can clean up Nashville and make it a city without bias," said the now-late Kelly Miller Smith Sr., who at the time was the president of the Nashville Christian Leadership Council and pastor of First Baptist Colored Church (now First Baptist Church, Capitol Hill). He added that the "Freedom March" was designed to emphasize that it was a "people's cause and not just a leader's cause."
On those two Saturdays in 1963, the demonstrators, mostly local college students – 85 on March 23 and approximately 60 on March 30 – marched through the downtown area dressed neatly and carrying signs, some of which read:
"Segregation and Democracy Don't Mix," 'Make Nashville Great, Desegregate," "Does Brotherhood Include Segregation?" 'Sacrifice for Freedom, Christ Did," and "We Want Justice to Come to Nashville."
The demonstrators stopped in front several businesses, the B&W Cafeteria, Cross Keys Restaurant, the Krystal, Tic Toc Restaurant and Wilson-Quick Drug Company, all of which had been scenes of sit-in demonstrations in the past because of their racial discrimination practices.
The demonstrations were orderly, however, John Lewis, who at the time was chair of the Student Central Committee of the NCLC, and in 1987 would be sworn in as a member of the U.S. Congress from Georgia, said on March 23 that the group was pelted with eggs by several white youths who passed in an automobile near what was then 18th Avenue (now D.B. Todd Boulevard) and Jefferson Street. No one was injured.
Almost three years earlier, in April 1960, a significant number of Nashville's downtown business lunch counters began to desegregate after then Nashville Mayor Ben West said in a meeting with protestors following the bombing of prominent Civil Rights Attorney Z. Alexander Looby's North Nashville home that he believed the city's lunch counters should be open all people.
That followed organized student sit-demonstrations which were started in Nashville in February 1960 an effort to desegregate downtown lunch counters. The students, both Black and white, had been trained in non-violent resistance.
Some were even attacked by white agitators, but they had been taught not to fight back.
The 'Freedom March'' in Nashville carried over into the spring of 1964 against those few businesses that refused to serve all people. But that ended in July 1964 when the U.S. Congress passed the 'landmark civil rights and law that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin.''
Marching has not just been confined to Nashville over the years when it comes to the fight against social injustice. People have marched in Memphis, Knoxville, Selma and Birmingham. They've marched on Washington, and even in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and many other places.
Dwight Lewis is a former reporter, editor and columnist for The Tennessean.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Freedom March anniversary: A look at the 1963 Civil Rights marches
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