The Nashville Non-Violent Sit-Ins

Reverend Kelly Miller Smith, pastor of First Baptist Church, established in 1958 the Nashville Christian Leadership Conference (NCLC) as an affiliate of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference.  In March of 1958 the NCLC began holding workshops on nonviolent tactics to combat segregation.  These were organized by James Lawson, a student at Vanderbilt Divinity School, who had studied nonviolent principles as a missionary in India.

Rev. James Lawson and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

The sit-in began in February of 1960, challenging the segregated eating counters in many downtown Nashville stores.  On February 13, 100 protesters, mostly black college students from various universities, descended on 3 stores on 5^th Avenue. North:  McLellan’s, Woolworth’s, and Kress.   Eventually other stores, including Walgreens, were added.

(Nashville Today:  The Dollar General Store was Woolworths, the brown building was McLellan's, next door to the right was Kress, and across the street, Walgreens.)

The sit-ins continued to grow, culminating on February 27 when 79 demonstrators were arrested for disorderly conduct and loitering.  Many of those convicted refused to pay the $50 fine, utilizing the “jail-no bail” tactic.  Student leader, Diane Nash, explained the tactic: "We feel that if we pay these fines we would be contributing to and supporting the injustice and immoral practices that have been performed in the arrest and conviction of the defendants."

(Diane Nash and Kelly Miller Smith)

A series of demonstrations, bombings, arrests and beatings occurred over the next weeks. On April 20, Martin Luther King, Jr. arrived and addressed 4000 students at Fisk University.  He stated: "The only thing uncertain about the death of segregation is the day it will be buried."

Finally, on May 10, black students are served food at six downtown counters, including the four stores mentioned above. Nashville became the first major southern city to desegregate its lunch counters.

How Do I Figure Out What I Am Called To?

We have many young adults (age 18-35) at Faith Lutheran.  In fact, nearly 80 young adults have actually become members of Faith in the last two years.  I am fascinated by my conversations with this age group.  Many of them are very open to stating that they have become involved in church because they want to be more spiritual.

As we go deeper into discussing what exactly that means, what I often discover is that these young folks are beginning to take seriously what God might be calling them to do in life and with their lives.

We don’t begin life with this question.  We arrive at it, and these young adults are arriving there much sooner in life than most people, including most of the folks in my early-stage baby-boomer generation.

In earlier blogs I have talked about Martin Luther King, Jr’s sense of “call,” and in my last blog I talked about “the call” in general.  Now, let’s go a bit deeper.

For me “call” has both an interior and an exterior dimension.  Take, for example, my own sense of call to ministry.  In my high school years I was very involved in Luther League (what we called youth ministry at the time) and in Bible Camping, first as a camper, and then on staff as a counselor.  During those years many folks told me they thought I had the talents and gifts for parish ministry.  That is the exterior dimension: what other people see God calling you to do.

As my own relationship with God grew during those years, I began to feel a sense of call to ministry.  It was not any kind of a blinding flash, like St. Paul or Luther, but just a growing conviction.  It wasn’t that clear or always that strong, but I at least felt I should consider it as a possible calling from God.  That is what I mean by an interior dimension.

As I study the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. I don’t think his interior call was that strong in the beginning.  He came from a long line of ministers and he seems just to have gone along that route without a clarity of an interior call.  I don’t know this for sure, but that is what he seems to be saying in his writings.  It was not until his “kitchen crisis” [see 8/9/12 Blog] that that interior relationship became strengthened and clear.

As for his exterior call, an example of that would be when, in a matter of hours, he is asked to be the president of the Montgomery Improvement Association [see 8/6/12 Blog].  People saw his gifts for leadership, he accepted, and it changed from that time on the nature of his understanding of call to ministry.  He would spend less time in parish ministry and more and more time leading the Civil Rights Movement as it sought change through non-violent, direct action.

What complicates things further is that our sense of call is going to change over time.  Since call is the bringing together of our gifts and the needs of the world, as those gifts change and the world changes, our call will also change.  Some of the most confusing times in my life have been when I sensed my call was changing, but I wasn’t sure in what ways, or what I should do next.  More on that later.

For now, please share your thoughts on how you understand “call” in your life, and what you are experiencing in terms of both the inner and outer call.

And, if you would like to be a part of a face-to-face discussion of your sense of call, using the Civil Rights Movement as a case study, I will be teaching a class this year that will meet once a month, with identical sessions on a Thursday evening and a Saturday morning.  Please email me for details (pastorbrian@flcva.org)