NASHVILLE, Tenn. (ABP) — Americans today think nothing of walking into a fast-food restaurant and eating next to a person of another race, but that is because of sacrifices made by others, a Baptist minister reminded an audience at a Martin Luther King Day celebration Jan. 18 in Nashville, Tenn.
Baptist preacher Kelly Smith Jr. speaks at Martin Luther King Day celebration at Tennessee State University.
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"The reasons why we have reached the accomplishments that we have been able to accomplish, the reason we are able to do the things that we do, is because there were those prior to us who were able to commit themselves to a spirit of courage," said keynote speaker Kelly Miller Smith Jr., pastor of Mount Olive Baptist Church in Knoxville, Tenn.
The observance was sponsored by the Interdenominational Ministers Fellowship and held on the campus of Tennessee State University. It commemorated not only the 81st birthday of the slain civil-rights leader but also the 50th anniversary of famous sit-ins by black students that forced Nashville to become the first major city in the South to desegregate its public facilities.
"It took courage," Smith, who also serves as executive director of the Sunday School Publishing Board of the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc., said of the hundreds of students from nearby colleges and theology schools who participated in the sit-ins. They risked harassment, abuse and arrest to sit down and order hamburgers, fries and soft drinks at whites-only lunch counters in downtown department stores for three months beginning in February of 1960.
Smith's father, Kelly Smith Sr., who died in 1984, was pastor of Nashville's First Colored Baptist Church — now called First Baptist Church of Capitol Hill. He led the Nashville Christian Leadership Council, an affiliate of Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which began the movement to desegregate Nashville's downtown lunch counters.
The strategy of non-violent demonstration became a model for other cities in the South, and the sit-in movement spread far and wide. It influenced public policy including the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, which expanded voter rights and outlawed racial segregation in establishments that serve the general public.
The sit-ins were carefully staged events. Participants were trained ahead of time in non-violent-resistance techniques, including non-retaliation against an aggressor. In instances where physical attacks did occur — the protestors — not the violent hecklers, were usually arrested.
"In many respects Nashville is a great city, but Nashville just didn't start off this way," said Smith. "Nor does Nashville have to stay this way," he added, referring to the fact that while much progress has been made since the Civil Rights Movement, much remains to be done to achieve King's dream of full equality.
Youth from Mt. Ararat Missionary Baptist Church take part in Nashville's Martin Luther King Day march.
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Thousands of participants marched from nearby Jefferson Street Missionary Baptist Church onto the Tennessee State campus to attend the convocation in TSU's Howard C. Gentry Athletic Complex. Smith, 54, reminded the audience that during his lifetime, there was a time when they could not have made the march anywhere in Nashville "without having police not escorting you as they did today, but coming after you with dogs and fire hoses and with other kinds of means to disrupt and discourage those who were trying to stand for a cause."
After 81 of the sit-in protestors convicted of disorderly conduct in 1960 refused to pay their fines and chose to instead spend time in jail, the Baptist Minister's Conference of Nashville voted unanimously to support the students, galvanizing the black community around their cause.
The Nashville Christian Leadership Council organized a boycott of downtown businesses. The mayor offered a compromise of dividing lunch counters into sections for blacks and whites, but the NCLC refused. On May 10, 1960, Nashville became the first major city to begin desegregating its public facilities.
Smith said King wrote his father to say how much he appreciated what was happening in Nashville. "It became the model that carried to many other cities along this way," he said.
Smith urged listeners to follow the example set by the Nashville protestors in their commitment "to stand not just for themselves, but to stand for the cause of righteousness, liberation and justice."
Smith said he believes King would have celebrated the election of Barack Obama as America's first African-American president, but that he would not feel that his dream of racial reconciliation has been completely fulfilled.
Smith said many of the words used to describe King — hero, martyr, civil-rights leader, Nobel Prize winner — overlook an important fact.
"The key thing we need to remember about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is that he was a minister of the gospel," he said. "He was one who sought to do what God had called him to do. He didn't do it just because he was trying to help people. He didn't do it just because of the fact there were those who were being discriminated against. He did it because God needed him to do it."
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Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.