This walking and driving tour provides the locations and history of places that played a key role in Nashville’s Civil Rights Movement. These places included churches, schools, universities, commercial buildings, recreational facilities and other types of properties. The identification of these places provides a direct physical connection to the past and helps people understand how local civil rights activists worked to promote a free and just society in Nashville.
This brochure (published by Historic Nashville, Inc. with support from the Tennessee Preservation Trust and the MTSU Center for Historic Preservation) was produced to promote sites in Nashville associated with the Civil Rights Movement and help preserve the remaining places where important events occurred.
The properties are organized into six broad chronological and thematic sections:
Early Civil Rights Efforts, 1866-1955
Public School Desegregation, 1955-1957
The Nashville Christian Leadership Council, 1959
The Nashville Student Movement and the Sit-ins, 1959-1960
The Aftermath of the Sit-ins, 1960-1964
The Public School Busing Crisis, 1971-1980s
