This February marks one century of Black history month. While events across the nation are bringing greater awareness to African American cultural contributions, there’s a lot happening to highlight the history made right here in Nashville.
Two Nashville sites have been added to the U.S. Civil Rights Trail. One is the Jefferson Street Sound Museum, devoted to the blues and R&B scenes that once thrived along a historically Black business corridor that was also a site of Civil Rights organizing.
The other, the Museum of Christian and Gospel Music, just opened last year and includes a section on gospel music serving as a spiritually empowering soundtrack to Civil Rights activists.
And Friday is the annual Nashville Conference on African American History and Culture. There’s music on the schedule, including the W. Crimm Singers repertoire of spirituals and hymns. But most of the day will be devoted to scholarly presentations, one of them exploring the years the great author and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston spent in Nashville.
Next Wednesday, Vanderbilt will host a celebration of the new memoir by the late Civil Rights leader James Lawson at the Woolworth Theatre. This is a full circle moment for Reverend Lawson, and the city. He helped organize anti-segregation lunch counter sit-ins at that site in the ‘60s, and was expelled by Vanderbilt for it, before later returning to study, teach and receive the respect he’s due.
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