Pieces of Desegregation Plaque Donated to Fisk University

In the summer of 2020, a peaceful protest in response to the death of George Floyd turned violent in downtown Nashville. One casualty of the violence was the permanent Desegregation Plaque near the downtown courthouse. Protestors broke the plaque and used the pieces to shatter the courthouse windows, including the offices of Mayor John Cooper and Deputy Mayor of Community Engagement Brenda Haywood.

Haywood was shocked when the demonstrators destroyed the plaque, presuming they did not know its significance.

“It saddened me because I remember when that plaque went up. I remember why it went up,” Haywood recalled. “I remember the blood, sweat and tears that were encapsulated in that plaque and the people like Diane Nash and John Lewis and the significance they had on my life.”

On April 19, 2022, the Nashville Bar Association and Nashville Bar Foundation, in partnership with the Napier Looby Association and Foundation, the Mayor’s Office, the Black Caucus of the Metro Council, and exclusive sponsor K&L Gates, presented the salvaged pieces to the Fisk University John Hope and Aurelia Elizabeth E. Franklin Library in a dedication ceremony.

Nashville Bar Association board member and Spencer Fane attorney William J “Paz” Haynes, III, remarked, “In the summer of 2020, under the leadership of President Laura Baker, the NBA formed a Special Committee on Race and Equity which launched a series of initiatives to continue the constructive, difficult dialogue within the legal community that the George Floyd killing sparked nationally… It was just as important for the Committee to answer the destruction that took place in our own community. Dr. [Martin Luther] King [Jr.] once said that such destruction in response to injustice was the language of the unheard. To us, it was an opportunity to educate and raise awareness of how civil, peaceful demonstration and legal advocacy has been, and still can be, the path to progress and true justice. We believed that restoring this memorial is a message that that legacy must be preserved and celebrated.”

The plaque, originally dedicated on April 19, 1995, commemorated the 1960 desegregation of Nashville.

On the morning of April 19, 1960, the home of black Councilman Z. Alexander Looby was bombed. Several thousand marchers walked to the Metro Courthouse in protest, where Mayor Ben West met them and told the crowd, in a public exchange with Fisk University student Diane Nash, that shop owners were wrong to sell to black residents while denying them service at lunch counters.

During the dedication, Mayor John Cooper stated, “That public conversation between Nash and West in 1960 helped begin a new chapter in Nashville, which would soon start to desegregate lunch counters and break down segregation barriers across the city. In 1995, Diane Nash attended the plaque dedication

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