Nashville
In September 1957, Lewis arrived in Nashville and started attending the American Baptist Theological Seminary (ABT). While there, he refined his devotion to the empowerment of African Americans and began acting on it more seriously. Crucial to the process were his professors and the students around him. Lewis’ professors gave him more exposure to the social gospel, introducing him to the work of others who championed it like Walter Rauschenbusch. They also acquainted him with philosophers such as Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Kant, Heraclitus, Hegel, and St. Augustine. Connecting their ideas to the plight of African Americans was an important experience for Lewis and allowed him to better understand the “contradiction between what was and what ought to be” (73). The students around Lewis helped him develop into an activist. He was able to speak to peers like future Civil Rights leader James Bevel about racial issues every day, so it is easy to see how. In fact, shortly into his time at ABT, after hearing about the Little Rock Nine, Lewis decided to start an on-campus NAACP chapter. Unfortunately, the institution’s president prevented him from doing so. Why? ABT was supported financially and administratively by the white Southern Baptist Convention. It could not risk losing this support. Dismayed, Lewis decided to transfer and integrate Troy State in Alabama. When his application was ignored, he sent a letter to Martin Luther King Jr. A meeting was set up and, in the summer, he traveled to Montgomery and met with attorney Fred Gray, King, and the Reverend Ralph David Abernathy. During the meeting, the three men made sure he knew what he was getting into. They told him “something could happen to you. … Your parents could be harassed. They could lose work, lose their jobs. They could be assaulted. Your home could be attacked. The farm could be burned” (77). Since Lewis was still a minor, he needed his parents’ permission to file a lawsuit against Troy State. He was willing to take action, but they were not. Heartbroken, he returned to ABT. Even though nothing ended up happening, this episode is proof of the effect Lewis’ professors and fellow students had on him.
Arriving in Nashville for the second time, Lewis noticed that something was different. Inspired by the independence movements in Ghana, Zaire, Somalia, Nigeria, and the Congo, African American students in Nashville had begun agitating for change in America. Nashville, one of the most racially progressive cities in the South, still had segregated libraries, theaters, schools, hotels, restaurants, and lunch counters. Lewis and his peers were becoming more aware of how much Nashville was “rooted in racial division, hatred and even violence” (81). “A sense of urgency … was spreading among them … a growing feeling that the movement for civil rights needed-no, demanded their involvement” (80). Leaders in the movement took notice, Fred Shuttlesworth, Martin Luther King Sr, Roy Wilkins, Thurgood Marshall, W.E.B. DuBois, and Coretta Scott King all came to speak in Nashville. The person who had the largest impact on Lewis though, was James Lawson. A student at Vanderbilt’s School of Divinity and field secretary for the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Lawson held workshops on nonviolent direct action for African American students in Nashville. After attending one, Lewis was hooked. Over time, more and more students began attending these workshops, including James Bevel, Marion Barry, and Diane Nash. After introducing attendees to the theory and philosophy of nonviolence, Lawson moved on to teaching them how to use what they learned in the field. He taught them how to respond to verbal and physical assaults, how to protect their bodies during attacks, and made them perform protest simulations. With Lawson’s help, students decided their protests would consist of sit-ins and organized themselves into a formal organization, the Nashville Student Movement. On November 28th, 1958 their first sit-in took place. The target, a department store named Harvey’s. Harvey’s served African Americans, but they had to use colored restrooms and could not eat at the lunch counters. Alongside eleven other students, Lewis went to Harvey’s and took a seat at its lunch counters. A white waitress noticed and told them “I’m sorry, we can’t serve you here” (95). Undeterred, Diane Nash, one of the participants, asked to speak to the manager. When the manager arrived and told them they had to leave, they did. The next week, students held another sit in, this time at a department store named Cain-Sloan. However, the manager at Harvey’s had told his colleagues what happened, and they were met at the door. A white waitress said, “we don’t serve colored people,” (96) and Lewis asked for the manager. When he said the same thing, the students left. Why the lack of action? These first sit-ins were test runs. Their purpose was to give students a lay of the land. After students left for winter break and returned, they launched a series of sit-ins involving hundreds of students that would not stop until segregation at lunch counters was ended.
Nashville students did not launch this series of sit-ins on their own. Four male students at North Carolina A&T College in Greensboro did all the work for them. One afternoon, these four students decided to stage a sit-in at the lunch counter of the Woolworth’s store in downtown Greensboro. The press jumped on the incident, and when the news reached Nashville, the student movement blew up. On February 13th they began real sit-ins, not test runs. Again targeting Nashville department stores, sit-ins were so effective these stores started closing their lunch counters. As sit-ins continued, white Nashvillians reacted with violence. They yelled at participants “Go home niggers!” and demanded they “Get back to Africa!” (106). Well-trained and determined, the students ignored them. Even when whites pushed them off their stools, shoved them against the counter, punched and kicked them, burned them with cigarettes, and poured coffee and other beverages and food items on them, students did not retaliate and continued to protest. They were bloodied, bruised, and arrested and jailed, but they never faltered. Eventually, students, along with the broader African American community, decided to boycott every downtown Nashville store. Whites stayed away too, because of everything the students were doing. After the home of Zephaniah Alexander Looby, an African American who served as an attorney for student protesters, was bombed, the Nashville Student Movement marched on city hall. Five thousand strong according to Lewis, its leaders forced the city’s mayor to “appeal to all citizens to end discrimination, to have no bigotry, no bias, no hatred” (116) and to integrate lunch counters. Frustrated by the lack of business and the Nashville Student Movement, downtown store owners integrated their lunch counters on May 10th, 1960. A leader in the Nashville Student Movement and a member from the time it started, Lewis was a key contributor to its success.