Civil Rights

Charles S. Johnson, distinguished sociologist and African American leader, was born in 1893 in Bristol, Virginia. He was educated at Wayland Academy in Richmond, Virginia Union University, and the University of Chicago, where he undertook graduate work with the distinguished…

This lawsuit filed by several African American families in 1955 to desegregate the Nashville public schools dramatically altered education patterns, and its various remedies continue to generate debate. The longest-running case in Tennessee history (the federal court in Nashville still…

Internationally acclaimed spokesman of the Civil Rights movement Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis on April 4, 1968. King was in Memphis in an attempt to raise awareness of and support for a strike…

The Knoxville riot took place on August 30-31, 1919. Although many historians question whether it was a "race riot" in the classic sense, it bore many characteristics of that phenomenon. The arrest of Maurice Mayes, a sometimes deputy sheriff, touched…

The infamous Ku Klux Klan (KKK) was organized in May or early June of 1866 in a law office in Pulaski by six bored Confederate veterans (the "immortal six"). The Ku Klux Klan was, in its inception, a social club…

James E. Lawson Jr. made a significant mark on the history of the Civil Rights movement in Tennessee and in the South. He is best known in Tennessee history as the Vanderbilt Divinity School student who was expelled in 1960…

John R. Lewis, now a congressman from Atlanta, was one of the early student leaders in the Civil Rights movement in Tennessee. Lewis was born on February 21, 1940, in Troy, Alabama, to Eddie and Willie Mae Carter Lewis. One…

Nashville councilman, judge, and civil rights activist, Robert E. Lillard was born March 23, 1907, in Nashville, to John W. and Virginia Allen Lillard. He received his education at Immaculate Mother's Academy and in local public schools before attending Beggins…

Attorney and civil rights activist Z. Alexander Looby was born in Antigua, British West Indies, on April 8, 1899, the son of John Alexander and Grace Elizabeth Joseph Looby. After the death of his father, young Looby departed for the…

One of many expressions of violence directed mostly towards African Americans following Reconstruction and lasting well into the twentieth century was lynching. According to one set of statistics, lynch mobs in the old Confederate states, including Tennessee, killed 2,805 people,…

Mason Temple, a flagship of the Church of God in Christ (COGIC), was a monumental achievement, becoming upon its completion in 1945 the largest gathering place in Memphis as well as the largest church owned and operated by African Americans…

Two years after the passage of the 1957 Civil Rights Act, civil rights activists John and Viola Harris McFerren led voter-registration drives in Fayette County. Unyielding proponents of the right of African Americans to exercise the franchise, the McFerrens were…

Founded in 1888 by the Reverend Taylor Nightingale, the Memphis Free Speech was published on the grounds of Nightingale's church, the First (Beale Street) Baptist Church. The name of the paper changed to Free Speech and Headlight when J. L.…

On May 1-2, 1866, Memphis suffered its worst race riot in history. Some forty-six African Americans and two whites died during the riot. A Joint Congressional Committee reported seventy-five persons injured, one hundred persons robbed, five women raped, ninety-one homes…

When African American sanitation workers in Memphis began a strike on February 12, 1968, few then suspected the walkout would escalate into one of the climactic struggles of the civil rights and labor movements of the 1960s. By the time…

Launched in 1931 by the Southern Newspaper Syndicate as a tri-weekly under the editorial direction of Lewis O. Swingler (1906-1962), the World later claimed to be the "South's Oldest and Leading Colored Semi-Weekly Newspaper." Though the World emphasized racial pride,…

The Metropolitan Government of Nashville/Davidson County created the Metropolitan Human Relations Commission in 1965 during a period of heightened racial tensions in the community and the nation. Composed of fifteen persons representative of the various social, economic, religious, cultural, ethnic,…

In the vanguard of the national civil rights and antiwar movements from 1959 to 1967, Diane Judith Nash was born on May 15, 1938, in Chicago, Illinois. Reared a Roman Catholic, Nash received her primary and secondary education in the…

Nashoba was a short-lived, but internationally famous, utopian community on the present-day site of Germantown in Shelby County. Nashoba was founded in 1826 by Frances Wright, who dreamed of demonstrating a practical and effective alternative to the South's slave-based agricultural…

Founded in 1906, the Nashville Globe promoted self-reliance and racial solidarity as the best means for Nashville's African American community to succeed and prosper within the confines of the Jim Crow South. After an editorial run that lasted more than…