Walking with the Wind

In the spring and summer of 1960, the SNCC’s central committee “began mapping out a campaign that would begin the next school year, aimed at the restaurants beyond downtown, at movie theaters, at segregated hotels and grocery stores” (115). They also launched a Nashville voter registration drive in May 1960, which was the precursor to the much larger drives that would happen two years later in Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. This campaign was successful—400 Black residents registered to vote.

While Nashville’s department stores were now desegregated, “the rest of the city’s businesses remained as racially divided as ever” (121). The Nashville student leaders extended their targets to fast-food grills and cafeterias, including Burger Boy, Candyland, B&W, Tic-Toc, and Krystals, as well as movie theaters. Lewis recalls one incident at Krystals where he almost died. The manager locked Lewis and Bevel in the burger joint and turned on a fumigator filled with insecticide. Firemen eventually rescued Lewis and Bevel, but this incident illustrated that “the stakes were going to keep rising in the struggle” (123).

Several weeks after this incident, the US Supreme Court ruled on a case called Boynton v. Virginia, which made segregation at all interstate transportation facilities, including bus terminals, illegal.