The Daily Beast
The Nonviolent Sit-Ins That Desegregated Nashville’s Lunch Counters
via Library of CongressOn April 19, we will commemorate—as well we should—the twenty-sixth anniversary of the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. But April 19 is also the anniversary of another consequential, albeit lesser known, bombing: On that date in 1960, a bomb went off at the home of Alexander Looby, the Black lawyer representing students and other activists arrested in sit-ins aimed at integrating downtown Nashville. Looby and his family survived, but the bomb blew out 147 windows at a nearby medical college.The sit-ins had been going on for several weeks. Leaders of the movement, brought together by the Rev. Kelly Miller Smith and trained in nonviolent direct action by James Lawson, included a who’s who of future luminaries: John Lewis, Bernard Lafayette, James Bevel, and C.T. Vivian hailed from the American Baptist Theological Seminary; and Diane Nash and Marion Barry were from Fisk University.The early morning bombing led these leaders to immediately organize…
