A group of people who were at Vanderbilt during the Nashville sit-in movement in the 1960s will discuss the campus climate at that time in the Student Life Center tonight. An early civil rights movement aimed at integrating lunch counters, the sit-ins were a controversial period in the university's history.
Vanderbilt and The Nashville Sit-In Movement: A Fifty Year Retrospective will be moderated by Gary Gerstle, James Stahlman Professor of History, and feature the Rev. James Lawson, distinguished university professor and the key organizer of the original protests.
Mark Dalhouse, director of the Office of Active Citizenship and Service, said he believes current students will benefit from the discussion as issues of civil rights continue to be important both to our community and nation.
“The history of any place is multifaceted. There's not a monolithic response. It's always important to realize how complicated these issues are,” Dalhouse said.
Dalhouse said he also believes a compelling reason for attendance is Lawson, one of the symposium's speakers. During the movement, Lawson was a Divinity School student and a chief organizer and philosopher of the movement who was expelled from the university for his participation. Now Lawson is back at the university as a distinguished visiting professor. Dalhouse said he feels this turn of events speaks to the cycle of history.
Other speakers include John Seigenthaler, founder of the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt and publisher emeritus at The Tennessean; Dr. John Sergent, professor of medicine and 1964 Vanderbilt graduate; Susan Ford Wiltshire, professor of classics, emerita; Charles Roos, professor of physics, emeritus; and Crystal deGregory, a doctoral student at Vanderbilt. Roos and Wilshire were faculty in 1960.
The event will begin with a reception at 6 p.m. with the symposium following at 7 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.
