[1] Later that day, at least 3,000 people marched to City Hall to confront Mayor Ben West about the escalating violence.

In 1896, the United States Supreme Court decision Plessy v. Ferguson upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation under the doctrine of "separate but equal".

[4][5] In Nashville, like most Southern cities, African Americans were severely disadvantaged under the system of Jim Crow segregation.

Besides being relegated to underfunded schools and barred from numerous public accommodations, African Americans had few prospects for skilled employment and were subject to constant discrimination from the white majority.

The Nashville Christian Leadership Council (or NCLC), was founded by the Reverend Kelly Miller Smith, pastor of First Baptist Church, Capitol Hill.

Among those attending Lawson's sessions were students who would become significant leaders in the Civil Rights Movement, among them: Marion Barry, James Bevel, Bernard Lafayette, John Lewis, Diane Nash, and C. T.

The group felt that the lunch counters were a good objective because they were highly visible, easily accessible, and provided a stark example of the injustices black Southerners faced every day.

[13] In late 1959, James Lawson and other members of the NCLC's projects committee met with department store owners Fred Harvey and John Sloan, and asked them to voluntarily serve African Americans at their lunch counters.

[14][15] Small groups of students purchased items at the stores and then sat at their lunch counters and attempted to order food.

During the first week of February 1960, a small sit-in demonstration in Greensboro, North Carolina, grew into a significant protest with over eighty students participating by the third day.

Although similar demonstrations had occurred previously in other cities, this was the first to attract substantial media attention and public notice.

At about 12:30 pm, 124 students, most of them black, walked into the downtown Woolworths, S. H. Kress, and McLellan stores and asked to be served at the lunch counters.

[27][28] Tensions mounted over the following week as sit-in demonstrations spread to other cities and race riots broke out in nearby Chattanooga.

[29][30] On February 27, the Nashville student activists held a fourth sit-in at the Woolworths, McLellan's, and Walgreens stores.

On February 29, the first day of the trials, a crowd of more than 2000 people lined the streets surrounding the city courthouse to show their support for the defendants.

Doyle dismissed the loitering charges against the students and then stepped down from the bench, turning the trial over to Special City Judge John I.

[41] Diane Nash issued a statement on behalf of the students explaining the decision: "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.

"[42] The same day the trials began, a group of black ministers, including James Lawson, met with Mayor Ben West to discuss the sit-ins.

The newspaper was owned by James G. Stahlman, a Vanderbilt trustee who was "strongly anti-integration";[44] it published misleading stories, including the suggestion that Lawson had incited others to "violate the law.

[50][51] Less than a week after the Biracial Committee issued its report, the sit-ins resumed, and the boycott of downtown businesses was intensified.

[52][53] At 5:30 am on April 19, dynamite was thrown through a front window of Z. Alexander Looby's home in north Nashville,[54] apparently in retaliation for his support of the demonstrators.

Reverend C. T. Vivian read a prepared statement accusing the mayor of ignoring the moral issues involved in segregation and turning a blind eye to violence and injustice.

Diane Nash then asked the mayor if he felt it was wrong to discriminate against a person based solely on their race or skin color.

According to the agreement, small, selected groups of African Americans would order food at the downtown lunch counters on a day known in advance to the merchants.

[69][70] Although the end of the sit-in campaign brought a brief respite for civil rights activists in Nashville, institutionalized racism remained a problem throughout the city.

Over the next few years, further sit-ins, pickets, and other actions would take place at restaurants, movie theaters, public swimming pools, and other segregated facilities across Nashville.

[70][71][72][73] These actions continued until Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited segregation in public places throughout the United States.

[4] In that year, many of the key figures of the sit-ins, including James Lawson and Kelly Miller Smith, were interviewed by Robert Penn Warren for his book Who Speaks for the Negro?, in which they reflected on their experiences.