Saralee Says
I attended a program at Fisk University in 1999 when The Children was first published. David Halberstam invited all of “the children” to join him in a frank discussion of how their participation in the civil rights movement in Nashville affected their lives. It was one of the most inspirational events of my life.
Halberstam is the Pulitzer-winning author of nine books including The Best and the Brightest, The Fifties, Once Upon a Distant War, October 1964, and The Amateurs. The Children (Fawcett) is my personal favorite.
Imagine you are a college student, far from home, and someone comes to you and tells how you can make a difference in the way people like you are treated and change the world. The Children is the story of the brave young people who were at the forefront of the civil rights movement.
Who were “the children”? Students from Tennessee State University, American Baptist College and Fisk. What did they do? They courageously led the sit-ins at establishments in Nashville who would not serve people of color. How did they do it? You need to read the book to find out.
James Lawson was a student at Vanderbilt Divinity School in 1960. He had also studied peaceful civil disobedience from the master, Mohandas Gandhi, who believed that the world could be changed without violence, which was a new a different way of thinking here in the United States. Instead of using guns, Lawson convinced people that the most effective way to change the laws of segregation would be through peaceful sit-ins and marches. Once you joined the movement, you could not respond with force.
Halberstam is a master when describing what actually happened to each of the children throughout the book. If you are sitting at a lunch counter and someone spits on you, could you hold your temper? These college students could and did.
This is a great book for a group discussion. Many of us in Nashville may want to choose to ignore the harsh realities of segregation. Integration did not easily happen in Nashville, and Halberstam is the right person to tell this story because he was a writer for The Tennessean during the 1960s. It takes someone who lived and worked in Nashville to tell the truth about the fight for equality in our fair city.
Here are my questions for The City Paper book club. Why didn’t the local white churches actively participate early on in Nashville’s civil rights movement? How could a school with the label “divinity” expel one its students for his race? Why was The Tennessean so pro-civil rights and the other daily local paper, the Nashville Banner, so opposed to integration? Where were you during the 1960s? Were you personally affected when you watched blacks being beaten during the nightly news? This is a great book to use to create discussion and ideas about equality.
Larry’s Language
I remember the courage of “the children.” In February 1960 I was a sophomore in high school here and observed them being beaten, spit upon and assaulted as they led the sit-ins at McLellans and other lunch counters on Fifth Avenue in downtown Nashville. Their example inspired me to march with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and to organize voter registration in Mississippi.
Immediately after the Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954 to integrate schools, the attention of the nation focused on the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott. When the forces of good, led by Dr. King, triumphed, there was little public attention paid by most media and the white public. But Nashville was a connection among many of the political, social, and media forces that would nurture and organize the fight for racial equality.
The Tennessean aggressively covered news of the civil rights movement. The Nashville criminal court system prosecuted John Kasper, who had allegedly incited racial disturbances in East Tennessee shortly before the bombing of the Clinton Tennessee School. The Reverends Kelly Miller Smith and Will Campbell preached, educated, and organized here along with several others, but the real impact for Nashville and eventually for the nation came from a small group of young people, so young that author David Halberstam names his book The Children in their honor.
Most of the power of Southern society in Nashville in 1960 lined up in opposition to these young heroes: John Lewis, Diane Nash, James Bevel, Marion Barry, Gloria Johnson, Angeline Butler, Paul LaPrad, Curtis Murphy, Rodney Powell, and Bernard Lafayette. The police arrested them; the courts convicted them; the white churches condemned them; the downtown business community shunned them; and Vanderbilt University expelled their leader, James Lawson.
In 1955, when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke in Nashville, one member of the audience was Harvey Cox. In 1956, Cox — a professor at Oberlin University in Ohio — invited Dr. King to speak on that campus where Lawson was a student. Lawson was so inspired by King and the teachings of Mohandas Ghandi that he decided to come South to Nashville and help in the struggle for equality. Lawson organized workshops for “the children” and other students at Fisk University, Tennessee State University and American Baptist College in the techniques of non-violent political protest.
In February 1960 “the children” led their first public protest in Nashville, which resulted in the further integration of Nashville and inspired hundreds and thousands of others across the South to follow in their footsteps. In fact, many of “the children” later personally helped organize the civil rights movements in Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia.
The power of ideas is always stronger and more durable than physical force or coercion. This is brought home to us again by the scope and majesty of the role of “the children” in the modern civil rights movement.
Our next selection for The City Paper Book Club is The Emperor of Ocean Park by Stephen L. Carter.
