Photo Essay: One City, Two Peoples

"In 1960, downtown's Church Street was home to department stores where both blacks and whites shopped, but where only the whites were allowed to eat at the lunch counters. The same injustice, as is well known, played out all over the South. But Nashville was also home to several young college students who would go on to become inspired leaders of the civil rights movement. Those two facts intersected and gave birth to Nashville's sit-ins, a movement of nonviolent protest aimed at desegregating the city's lunch counters."