r North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College students captured Americas attention when they sat down at Woolworths lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, and requested service. However, prior to this demonstration and between 1943 and 1960, sit-ins had taken place in Chicago, St. Louis, Baltimore, and at least fifteen cities, including Nashville, Tennessee. The earlier protests did not gain full attention until 1960, when the southern civil rights movement gained momentum. Although Nashville was considered to be the Athens of the South and a few blacks served on the Board of Education, the city council, and the police force, blacks and whites were racially segregated. The pattern of racial exclusiveness prevailed in Nashvilles schools and public facilities, including rest rooms, waiting areas, snack counters, transportation terminals, libraries, theaters, hotels, restaurants, and neighborhoods. Jim Crowism pervaded all aspects of life in Nashville and throughout the South. In 4958, local black leaders founded the Nashville Christian Leadership Conference (NCLC), an affiliate of Martin Luther King, Jr.s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. On March 26-28, 1958, NCLC members held a workshop on nonviolent tactics against segregation. Under the leadership of the Reverend Kelly Miller Smith, NCLC president and pastor of First Colored Baptist Church, the workshops continued in the churchs basement throughout 1958. Early in 1959, the NCLC began a movement to desegregate downtown Nashville. On February 13, 1960, Nashvilles black college students launched their first full-scale sit-ins. For the next three months the students continued the sit-ins, including Greyhound and Trailways bus terminals, Grants variety store, Walgreens drugstore, and Cain-Sloans and Harveys department stores as targets. A few weeks later on May 10, six Nashville lunch counters began serving blacks. The students in Nashville had won an important victory ...
