Thanks for the reference to the importance of Nashville in the struggle for equality (i.e., the ’60s lunch-counter sit-ins). I doublt that folks here or elsewhere in the USA take sufficient notice of how Nashville played a role both in the struggle for racial equality and the earlier struggle for enfranchisement for women (because the Tennessee legislature meeting in Nashville made it the State that ratified the Constitutional amendment giving women the vote).

A couple of corrections. Nashville isn’t actually in the “Deep South”. The geographical and historical definition of this is the so-called “Cotton Belt States”, that is, from the Carolinas south and west to Mississippi. Even North Carolina is not included in “Deep South”. The Volunteer State is generally placed among the “Mid-South States”. A helpful way to remember which Southern States are “Deep South” is to consider which had seceded BEFORE the firing on Fort Sumter and Lincoln’s resulting declaration of war.

The other correction is more sobering. You may have considered that racist attitudes had been stomped out. But I’ve felt for years and years that the elimination of legal and/or overt forms of racial discrimination — segregated schools, Klansmen burning their blasphemous crosses, public use of the “n” word, etc. — was NOT being matched with a corresponding elimination of racist individual, personal attitudes and individual covert feelings or actions. Some of what I overheard as a substitute teacher (or even before this as a full-time teacher) or as a bus rider or strolling around city streets convinced me of this. (I haven’t even bothered with listening to talking heads in the broadcast media.) Racism may have been banished from public display, but it surely hadn’t been banished from all American hearts. You simply cannot change a person’s attitudes from the outside, any moe than you can force an alcoholic to admit their alcoholism. Change MUST be from the inside out. And alas! inwardly America is no closer to Dr. King’s dream.