Civil Rights Room at the Nashville Public Library

The room sits in the library's Special Collections on the second floor, across from the grand staircase, and it is built around a circular counter with stools. Sit down at it. A timeline of local and national events runs around the wall, and the collection behind it holds more than a hundred oral-history interviews with people who took part in Nashville's sit-ins. The interviews are read in the library, not borrowed.

The movement was planned for months before anyone sat down. On February 13, 1960, students from Fisk, American Baptist Theological Seminary, Meharry and Tennessee State entered Kress, Woolworth and McClellan on Fifth Avenue, bought small items and took seats at counters that closed rather than serve them. On February 27 white counter-protesters poured condiments on students, punched and kicked them, and put out a cigarette on one student's arm; police arrested 81 students and none of the roughly 200 white counter-protesters. John Lewis was among those who refused bail and stayed in jail for weeks, and Z. Alexander Looby, a Fisk professor, led thirteen lawyers in their defense.

On April 19 a bomb damaged Looby's home, and thousands marched to City Hall, where Mayor Ben West told Diane Nash that segregation was wrong. Downtown counters began serving Black customers on May 10, 1960. Fifth Avenue is now Rep. John Lewis Way, and the old Woolworth building still stands on it, a few blocks from the library at 615 Church Street.