The Tennessean from Nashville, Tennessee • Page X9

CYANMAGYELBLK TennesseanBroadsheet Master TennesseanBroadsheet Master 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 5 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 5 TennesseanBroadsheet Master TennesseanBroadsheet Master 5 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 5 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 9 ditlo www.tennessean.com THE TENNESSEAN Thursday, June 24, 2004 9 A special section ACCENTS for your home inside and out SUMMER SALE June 27 July 2 Shop our for the Best Selection June 23-26 OFF All Lamps OFF All Other Merchandise Courtyard Gate Iron Home Garden Courtyard Gate I-65 8 th Rd. Wedgewood 2504 Franklin Rd. Nashville, TN 615-383-0530 www.courtyardgate.com Morgan Park Place Germantown at 4th Ave.North and Van Buren St. Nashville Urban Living and Retail Opportunities Now Taking Reservations Fred Real Estate 615-383-6964 x124 inf A Joint Venture by Lawrence New Urban group decided to split, they were having a church meeting, and someone looked out the window at the beautiful green grass and said, call it Pleasant he said. Miller said the church uses the Missionary Baptist title because of its longstanding calling to take its mission to the streets.

believe in doing the mission like Jesus said to do, to feed the hungry, to visit the sick, to be a community he said. College. Central command exist anymore. What remains is a vacant lot with knee-high grass and three concrete steps that led to a place where Freedom Riders trained how to handle arrests and searches, what to carry on a bus and when to call their parents. Street was a said Lillard, who is a former Metro councilman.

met at a church two blocks off Jefferson Street called Clark (Memorial United Methodist Church). That was our nightly meeting place. Street was a home base, the headquarters. But the community was where we did most of the strategizing. It was the corridor that we considered Businesses along the then-thriving thoroughfare be it a office or the famous grocery store played a crucial role in sustaining the sit-in movement, historians and activists say.

the Greensboro sit-in was spontaneous, the Nashville movement has been planned over several months and drew students from the four predominantly black colleges as well as community according to The Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture. Those community residents included Metro Councilman and an attorney Z. Alexander Looby, who lived off Jefferson Street and was actively involved in defending arrested students and freeing them from jail across the state. As the racial tension in Nashville increased in light of numerous sit-ins and boycotts, segregationists bombed home in April of 1960. The outrage sparked the famous march to the City Hall, when then-Mayor Ben West spoke with Diane Nash and concurred that segregation was wrong and should no longer plague lunch counters.

When 79 students were arrested on March 4, 1960, during a demonstration, the black community raised $40,000 in two hours to bail them out. And take community member Robert L. Craighead, who opened his barbershop on Jefferson Street in the mid-1940s. Today a 90- year-old gentleman, Craighead still works in the same location. knew Diane Nash.

She came around the said Craighead, whose shop is near Fisk. gone to the meetings with them when they were planning the strategies. I was very much interested in the way to get away with unjust passion for equality was contagious. One of his daughters, he said, got arrested at a bus station during an anti-segregation demonstration. come home, and I knew what he said.

got arrested. Bond was $100. I gave it to (attorney Robert) Lillard, and she came home that night. When I went back to jail, I took them cigarettes and food. what they Kwame Leo Lillard said he remembers the many people on Jefferson Street who risked their lives to help but rarely got recognition.

then, we were no one. We had no he said. had to depend on people like that. We were kids. And they did it without us even asking.

It was understood. It was like a liberation Jefferson Street also was a place where students met with the Rev. Martin Luther King at Fisk and later with the Rev. James Lawson. Before they demonstrated downtown, the students trained for weeks how to handle abuse and violence at lunch counters in a non-violent manner.

thing we have to remember is, we have to get arrested said Diane Nash during a training session in 1960 in Anatomy of a Demonstration a CBS documentary filmed in Nashville in 1960. if we do, we go there with Fear was not an emotion the activists felt on Jefferson Street, Lillard recalled. could stop us, and nothing he said. idea of death was always there. We knew that one of us could be sniped out.

the plans for another demonstration, the plans for another rally, the plans for a trip out of town to teach other students, would always keep your mind on nothing Sources: The Tennessean and Nashville Banner archives, The Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture, The Children by David Halberstam. TENNESSEAN FILE PHOTO In May 1963, the Rev. Kelly Miller Smith, right, president of Nashville Christian Leadership Council and John Lewis, chairman of the Student Non-violence Committee of the NCLC, told a mass meeting of demonstrators at Mt. Zion Baptist Church on Jefferson Street not to protest in town until the outcome of a meeting between Nashville business officials and black leaders. Sit-ins continued from page 8 A Sunday school meeting at Mount Zion Baptist Church on Jefferson Street in the SUBMITTED Churches continued from page 8 The Jefferson Street area is home to three centers of higher learning: Fisk University Origins: Built as the Fisk School two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, the school served as an educational sanctuary for former slaves.

The first classes were on Jan. 9, 1866. Fisk School became Fisk University on Aug. 22, 1867. Early History: The university was hit hard with a debt crisis in 1871.

The Fisk Jubilee Singers traveled the world to raise funds that kept Fisk alive and constructed Jubilee Hall, a designated National Historical Landmark. Did you know? One misconception that Dr. Reavis Mitchell, chairman of history department and associate history professor, would like to clear up is that Fisk is designated only for African-American students. professors were white Northerners who came to educate black Mitchell said. faculty, president and teachers lived on the campus, and their children were educated at Fisk.

faculty now has approximately African-American professors, white American professors and the additional percent of foreign persons of white and black ancestry. Most people understand Meharry Medical College Origins: Originally known as The Medical Department of Central Tennessee College, Meharry became Walden University around 1900 and was named Meharry Medical College by 1915, according to the Meharry Medical College Web site. In 1910, Hubbard Hospital opened. Did you know? The account that has been passed down for generations tells the story of Samuel Meharry, a young white man whose salt wagon was stuck in mud as he traveled through Nashville. When a black family rescued him, he promised to repay them by helping their race, thus the idea for the medical college was born.

Mission: think contribution has been the preparation of caring, understanding physicians who practice many times in places where others said Dr. Calvin Calhoun, a 1960 Meharry graduate and a member of Board of Trustees. Tennessee State University Origins: The university was organized as the Agricultural and Industrial State Normal School in 1909 and began serving students on June 19, 1912. It became a four-year college in 1922 and elevated to full-fledged land-grant university status by the Tennessee State Board of Education in 1958. Early history: came from all said Loretta Divens, assistant in special collections department, of the early days of the university.

were doing things beyond their years and way beyond the boundaries set for them. They were going over hurdles and hurdles that just blew Today TSU, which began out of one main building at its inception, now operates out of more than 65 buildings serving more than 8,000 undergraduate and graduate students. KAREN JORDAN AND AMBER NORTH TENNESSEAN FILE PHOTO The junior class of Fisk University in 1898. Higher learning near Jefferson Street TENNESSEAN FILE PHOTO Pleasant Green Missionary Baptist originated in 1885; their current church building was built in 1926..