American Baptist College: Training Ground for a Revolution

The small college on Whites Creek Pike in North Nashville does not look like the place that helped reshape American democracy. But in nineteen fifty-nine and nineteen sixty, a group of students from this campus, trained in nonviolent direct action by a divinity student named James Lawson, launched one of the most disciplined and effective campaigns of the entire civil rights movement.

American Baptist Theological Seminary, as it was then known, was founded in nineteen twenty-four as a joint venture of the Southern and National Baptist Conventions to train Black ministers. It was small, underfunded, and largely unknown outside religious circles. What changed that was Reverend James Lawson, who came to Nashville as a graduate student at Vanderbilt's divinity school in nineteen fifty-eight. In a church basement, Lawson began weekly workshops in the philosophy and tactics of nonviolent resistance, drawing students from Fisk, Meharry, Tennessee State, and American Baptist. John Lewis, Bernard Lafayette, and James Bevel were all students at American Baptist and became core members of the movement Lawson was training.

On February thirteenth, nineteen sixty, less than two weeks after the Greensboro sit-ins in North Carolina, the Nashville Student Movement launched coordinated sit-ins at downtown lunch counters. The Nashville students were uniquely prepared. They did not react to taunts or violence. They dressed formally, studied at the counters while being harassed, and returned day after day. On May tenth, nineteen sixty, Nashville became one of the first major Southern cities to desegregate its lunch counters, a victory won in less than three months.

John Lewis went on to lead the Freedom Rides, chair the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, speak at the March on Washington, and serve thirty-three years in Congress. He credited the training he received here as the foundation of everything that followed.