Racial Etiquette and the
Struggle for Social Justice in a Southern City
Among Nashville’s many slogans, the one that best reflects its
emphasis on manners and decorum is the Nashville Way, a phrase coined by
boosters to tout what they viewed as the city’s amicable race
relations. Benjamin Houston offers the first scholarly book on the
history of civil rights in Nashville, providing new insights and
critiques of this moderate progressivism for which the city has long
been credited.
Civil rights leaders such as John Lewis, James Bevel, Diane Nash, and
James Lawson who came into their own in Nashville were devoted to
nonviolent direct action, or what Houston calls the “black Nashville
Way.” Through the dramatic story of Nashville’s 1960 lunch counter
sit-ins, Houston shows how these activists used nonviolence to disrupt
the coercive script of day-to-day race relations. Nonviolence brought
the threat of its opposite—white violence—into stark contrast, revealing
that the Nashville Way was actually built on a complex relationship
between etiquette and brute force. Houston goes on to detail how racial
etiquette forged in the era of Jim Crow was updated in the civil rights
era. Combined with this updated racial etiquette, deeper structural
forces of politics and urban renewal dictate racial realities to this
day.
In The Nashville Way, Houston shows that white power was
surprisingly adaptable. But the black Nashville Way also proved
resilient as it was embraced by thousands of activists who continued to
fight battles over schools, highway construction, and economic justice
even after most Americans shifted their focus to southern hotspots like
Birmingham and Memphis.
Reviews
“The civil rights saga of Nashville in the decades following World War
II is a complicated and bittersweet story of struggle and resistance,
change and continuity, success and disappointment; and Houston captures
it all with a rich narrative of black and white southerners engaged in a
historical drama of national and even international importance. The
first book to offer a comprehensive and balanced study of the city’s
distinctive racial and movement cultures, The Nashville Way fills an enormous gap in civil rights and southern historiography.”
—Raymond Arsenault, author of Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice
“Houston’s book details the particular nature of the Nashville community
and the way civil rights unfolded there but also adds to our
understanding of the civil rights movement more broadly. It is
engagingly written, even gripping at times, and its audience should
include the educated bookbuying public in and around Nashville.”
—Tracy E. K’Meyer, author of Civil Rights in the Gateway to the South: Louisville, Kentucky, 1945–1980
Join Us for the Award Ceremony
During the Decatur Book Festival
September 1, 2013
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