I’ve been on a quest to find out why The Nations is called The Nations. This hasn’t been an easy task, in part because searching Newspapers.com for “The Nations” brings up just about every issue of every paper ever.
(Before I go further, let me note that former Scene staffer J.R. Lind also talked about this some in 2021 for his column Walk a Mile. Go read that too.)
Anyway, I persevered because the conventional wisdom makes no sense. There are two stories:
1. This is the area in which all the Native American nations in the area came together to meet in James Robertson’s front yard and make peace with the new arrivals. So, the area has always been informally referred to as The Nations in honor of that diplomatic feat.
2. It’s called The Nations because all the streets have state names.
The second option is immediately dumb. If that’s the reason, why wasn’t the neighborhood called The States? Are we to believe that West Nashville people are so dumb that they didn’t know that California isn’t a nation?
In the 24th installment of his column, J.R. Lind explores a West Nashville neighborhood with an inscrutable name and structures both old and new
The first seems maybe slightly more plausible, except that it’s hard to imagine that a man whose brother and son were killed by "The Nations” would call the land in his front yard “The Nations.” Plus that story is way, way older than the neighborhood name. (I wrote about the early history of The Nations and all the killings here and here.) Meaning that people have been telling about Robertson making peace under the treaty tree in that area probably since it happened. But the tidy little explanation of “and that’s why it’s called The Nations” did not become conventional wisdom until the 1990s. In fact, I couldn’t find any reference to the area being called The Nations until the 1980s, which is much, much later than I expected.
But in all my newspaper perusing, I did notice that St. Luke’s Community Center kept coming up. According to its website, St. Luke’s started “in 1913 as The West Nashville Clinic by the Daughters of the King, an order of the Episcopal Church. St. Luke's began in four rooms of our current house to serve families of inmates at the State Penitentiary.” As you might have guessed from the time and the mention of the Tennessee State Penitentiary, St. Luke’s is located in The Nations — 5601 New York Ave.
And right about the time the nickname “The Nations” seemed to be solidifying, St. Luke’s was opening a thrift shop and a food pantry and asking for donations.
Now, if you’re a blues fan, you see the conclusion I jumped to: Much like Robert Johnson’s reference to a “donation sack” in “Come on in my Kitchen” got shortened to a “nation sack,” perhaps an area where people regularly came to make donations got called “The Donations,” shortened to “The Nations.”
This is the kind of convoluted but satisfying thinking they pay me the big bucks for.
But the other day, I went to lunch with Davie Tucker. He's the executive director of the Metro Human Relations Commission, and he grew up in Nashville and had friends who lived in the area under question. I told him my donations theory.
He was kind about it. His face revealed nothing more than, “Yep, this is a thing that Betsy is saying.” And then he said, “When we were growing up, it was just called The Nation, because of the streets with state names. I don’t know when or why they added the S.”
A giant hole opened up, I leaped into it, and my family never had to know the second-stupidest thing I ever reasoned myself into believing. The End.
Because, of course — Occam’s Razor. What is the simpler answer? Episcopal do-gooders were so fervent in their asking for donations that the whole area took on the name and then it got shortened? Or it was called The Nation because of the street names, and then at some point someone added an S and it stuck?
Still, if you have a better answer — either by being more logical or more ridiculous — I’d like to hear it.
The End. Again.
From the Nun Bun and Snowbird to Opryland and political corruption, here’s our curated list of pre-‘it’-city Nashville artifacts
OK, fine, here’s the first-stupidest thing I ever reasoned myself into believing. Way back in the day, all the bloggers in town kind of loosely knew each other, thanks to Nashville Is Talking (see last week’s cover story). I became friends with the hosts of radio show Liberadio! — future Mayor Freddie O'Connell, and future Tennessee Democratic Party Chair Mary Mancini. Mary had a husband named Kurt. Cool enough guy. Good cook.
At that time, during the Nashville Is Talking days, I’m talking to my brother Bart about this, and I explain how Mary’s husband is in a Lambchop cover band.
“Cool,” Bart says. “What’s it called?”
“Lambchop.”
“Betsy.”
“It’s avant garde. They use a different font for their logo.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“No, but it’s obvious.”
“So, in your mind, you met a guy named Kurt in a band called Lambchop, and the thing that makes the most sense to you is that he’s in an artsy-fartsy Lambchop cover band with the same name? That seemed more plausible than he’s just the guy in Lambchop?”
And then a hole opened up and I jumped in and I was never seen again. Or at least, I learned my lesson about not questioning the convoluted paths of ridiculousness my brain likes to take.
No, none of those things happened. I am prone to taking the scenic route to any conclusion, and sometimes that leads me to dumb places. It’s embarrassing, but funny.
Times are tough and about to get tougher. We all need some shit to laugh about. And hey, if you can, maybe make a donation to St. Luke’s in The Nations. You’d be supporting over a century of good work.
