White involvement in the Nashville sit-in
Though whites—particularly students and faculty from Vanderbilt—participated in the sit-ins as observers, Lawson explains that he did not let them join in too visibly because their presence would have increased the violence by decentering focus from the downtown business to Vanderbilt.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with James Lawson, October 24, 1983. Interview F-0029. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- DALLAS A. BLANCHARD:
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You had some whites involved in that as well as blacks, right?
- JAMES A. LAWSON:
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Now let me think about this. In the Fall I am not positive, OK?
- DALLAS A. BLANCHARD:
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Uh ha.
- JAMES A. LAWSON:
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I cannot be positive about that in the Fall. I'm trying to remember if
some of the exchange students at Fisk were involved and I'm also trying
to remember if, if at that time, amm, I know we took visitors sometimes
in some of that, cause we had a couple of church people from Africa
touring and they went with a couple of our groups.
- DALLAS A. BLANCHARD:
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Uh ha.
- JAMES A. LAWSON:
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And I can't recall if ... I cannot recall if we had any whites
considerably in that Fall.
- DALLAS A. BLANCHARD:
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OK.
- JAMES A. LAWSON:
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Paula Prod and a couple of exchange students did, were acting in the
sit-in campaign in February but I can't remember if they were in the
workshops in the Fall or not.
- DALLAS A. BLANCHARD:
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OK. What was the role of Will Campbell in the sit-ins?
- JAMES A. LAWSON:
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OK. Will organized what we called our observer groups.
- DALLAS A. BLANCHARD:
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Uh ha.
- JAMES A. LAWSON:
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Stayed in the downtown area when we were there keepin' a running record
of everything they saw.
- DALLAS A. BLANCHARD:
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Uh ha.
- JAMES A. LAWSON:
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And Will quite specifically organized that and then also, of course,
beyond that, was involved with the Human Relations Conference with other
folk interpreting what we were doing.
- DALLAS A. BLANCHARD:
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OK. What was Everett Tilson's role?
- JAMES A. LAWSON:
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This I do not remember for full. In early '60, but I would assume that he
might've been one of those observers. I have to tell you I sort of did
deliberately. In fact some of the folk at Vanderbilt sort of did not
like my decision but I sort of deliberately did not include them in
certain public phases for strategic reasons, namely that their presence
would often further inflame things and make Vanderbilt more the target
than our business downtown the target.
- DALLAS A. BLANCHARD:
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Uh ha.
- JAMES A. LAWSON:
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So I quite deliberately low-keyed exposing Vanderbilt's students and
people in at least the initial days of it, and then, also, the
initially, the larger number of blacks, I mean the larger number of
whites we used as witnesses and observers rather than as people
sitting-in directly.
- DALLAS A. BLANCHARD:
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Right.
- JAMES A. LAWSON:
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We used them in these other roles, and that again was a deliberate
decision.
- DALLAS A. BLANCHARD:
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Uh ha.
- JAMES A. LAWSON:
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For the purpose of court cases and the rest.