John Lewis, Part 2: The Nashville Sit-Ins
After graduating in 1957 from a segregated high school in rural Alabama, John Lewis moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where he graduated from American Baptist Theological Seminary in 1961 and was ordained as a Baptist minister. Two years later, he earned a BA in Religion and Philosophy from Fisk University. Lewis’s plans of becoming a Baptist minister were derailed, however, by his involvement in the Civil Rights Movement in Nashville. But his religious studies certainly didn’t go to waste. Discussing the religious, ethical and tactical basis of nonviolent civil disobedience with fellow students Jim Lawson, Diane Nash, James Bevel, Bernard Lafayette, and later-to-become DC’s Mayor Marion Barry, grounded Lewis’s activism in his Christian faith and love. Rev. James Lawson trained students from Nashville’s four Black colleges in the philosophy and tactics of nonviolent direct-action. Soon, Lewis was among nearly 500 students waging nonviolent sit-ins at segregated lunch counters and filling the jails of Nashville with their freedom songs. Sometimes, they would