Vanderbilt Memorial Gymnasium

Perry Wallace's years in the Southeastern Conference were a test of endurance. Averaging seventeen points and twenty rebounds as a freshman, he met racist cheers and threats of beatings, castration and lynching in arenas, particularly in Alabama and Mississippi, and referees ignored the physical abuse on the court. After one night in Starkville, Mississippi, a friend recalled, he sang the Pearl High alma mater. He never retaliated, knowing any perceived misconduct could set back SEC desegregation. On campus he was known by all, yet no one knew him.

What the plaque says

Vanderbilt Memorial Gymnasium Vanderbilt Memorial Gymnasium was dedicated to Vanderbilt students and alumni killed in World War II on December 6, 1952. The site of civil rights activities; here in 1966 Nashville's Pearl High School won the first desegregated TSSAA basketball championship tournament. Here in 1967 Vanderbilt freshman Perry Wallace and Godfrey Dillard desegregated SEC basketball, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Stokely Carmichael spoke at the Impact Symposium, and Otis Redding preformed his final major concert. In 1968, U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy spoke here shortly before he was killed.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fisk University and Jubilee Hall — 1.7 mi
  The 1866 school for freed people whose Jubilee Singers paid for Jubilee Hall, a National Historic Landmark, and whose students helped start Nashville's sit-ins.
• Fort Negley — 1.8 mi
  The largest inland stone fort of the Civil War, built in 1862 on St. Cloud Hill by more than 2,700 conscripted Black laborers, hundreds of whom died.
• Civil Rights Room at the Nashville Public Library — 1.8 mi
  A room in the downtown library with a circular lunch counter, a timeline and oral histories of the 1960 Nashville sit-ins, a few blocks from the stores where they began.
• National Museum of African American Music — 1.9 mi
  A downtown Nashville museum, opened in 2021, tracing gospel, blues, jazz, rhythm and blues and hip-hop through Black history from 1619 to 2016.

More markers nearby

• Anne Dallas Dudley — steps away
• Vanderbilt University — 0.4 mi
• Governor's Mansion — 0.4 mi
• Roger Williams University — 0.5 mi