James Lawson at First Baptist Church in Nashville, March 1960
Civil rights icon and U.S. Rep. John Lewis, who spent his formative years as an activist here in Nashville, died on July 17, 2020. On Sept. 15, 2020, the Metro Council had the first reading of an ordinance to name a street after this hero. Two months.
Another civil rights icon, the Rev. James Lawson, who spent his formative years in Nashville leading the Student Movement and getting kicked out of Vanderbilt Divinity School in 1960, died on June 9, 2024.
Where’s his street?
The civil rights leader died June 9 at age 95
Obviously, 21st Avenue from Jefferson to at least Blakemore should be Rev. James Lawson Avenue (or Way, or Street, or whatever). I would argue for just completely renaming 21st Avenue in his honor. Symbolically, this would take you right past the school he got kicked out of, past a hospital he could not have been a patient at, in the shadow of a park containing a pool he could not use, across Charlotte, where your progress would be thwarted by the way the city used the train tracks to form a barrier between Black and white Nashville. But as you'd weave through the neighborhood, trying to find a way across the tracks, you’d see the old Pearl (now MLK) High School, and catch a glimpse of Fisk University.
Get back on 21st/Rev. James Lawson and pass by Meharry Medical School, cross Jefferson, pass under the interstate. (Interesting side note: If you want to cross the interstate in North Nashville, you can use Clifton, Batavia, 28th Avenue North, Jefferson, 21st Avenue North, D.B. Todd, Arthur, Garfield, and Third Avenue North. There are only 10 places left in North Nashville that connect North Nashville neighborhoods on either side of the interstate. If you ever want to short-circuit your brain, check out the aforementioned Garfield. If you call your friend and tell them you’re on the corner of Ninth and Garfield, there are literally five different intersections you could be at. The interstate fucked that area up.)
Fifty years after I-40’s construction, a cycle of poverty and displacement churns again in 37208
But back to Rev. James Lawson Lane/Street/Avenue. Now you’re passing the Robert Churchwell School, before ending at Buchanan. You would get a visual history of all the social pressures at play when Lawson was here. You’d go by storied historically white institutions. You’d go by storied historically Black institutions. People on the street named after him would be able to look around and see the difference he made in the city just by virtue of seeing all the places that have opened up to Black people and other minorities.
Yes, we have a new high school named after him. Good job, Metro Nashville Public Schools board. But it is way off on the West Side of town, in an area with no association with Lawson. It’s an honor, for sure, but not an honor that resonates with the place. Having the Vanderbilt Divinity School, home of the James Lawson Institute for the Research and Study of Nonviolent Movements, sitting at 411 James Lawson St.?
That sounds pretty amazing.
