Photo of Grace McKinley escorting her daughter Linda Gail McKinley (younger daughter) and a friend to Fehr Elementary School on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Garfield Street, Nashville, Tennessee, September 9, 1957. Picket signs and participants protesting public school desegregation.
Photo courtesy of Nashville Banner Archives, Nashville Public Library Special Collections Department
Kelly V. Board of Education A lawsuit filed in 1955 by several black families seeking to desegregate Nashville's public schools. Zephaniah Alexander Looby, a prominent black lawyer in Nashville, joins Thurgood Marshall, director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Legal Education Fund, to advocate for Nashville public compliance. A lawsuit was filed against the school in federal district court.and Brown v. Board of Education. This was one of the nation's first desegregation challenges following the 1954 Supreme Court decision. Nashville barber Alfred Z. Kelly was the lead plaintiff in the case.
On September 23, 1955, attorneys Looby, Marshall, and Avon Williams, Jr. filed a lawsuit on behalf of 21 black children, including Kelly's son Robert Kelly. They wanted to attend East Middle School instead of having to go all the way across town.・Black Pearl High School. Robert Kelly agreed to become the lead plaintiff in the case after he was refused expulsion from East Middle School because of his race. Robert W. Kelly et al. v. Board of Education. Kelly Miller Smith Sr., pastor of First Colored Baptist Church (now First Baptist Church in Capitol Hill), was one of the parents involved in the incident. The lawsuit challenged the Nashville School Board's failure to implement the policy. 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Ruling.
Two years later, federal judge William E. Miller ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and ordered the Nashville School Board to submit a desegregation plan to the court by January 1957. In the spring of 1957, the court accepted the school board's desegregation plan. On September 9, 1957, 19 black children, all 6 years old, including Mr. Smith's first-grade daughter Joy, were taken to seven all-white Nashville elementary schools (Buena Vista, Jones, Fehr, Bailey, Glenn, Emma, etc.). Clemons, Hattie Cotton. Three students were unable to attend their first school due to improper transfer documentation. The remaining 16 transferred to elementary school the same day. Some students were angry. Some people were assaulted by white racists who threw rocks and bottles at them.
The next day, a bomb exploded at Hattie Cotton Elementary School early in the morning. The bomb destroyed half of the school, but no one was injured. In response, Reverend Smith and Will Campbell led community meetings immediately after the bombing, urging parents to continue their desegregation efforts. Hattie Cotton resumed nine days later. As a result of the investigation, white racist John Kasper was arrested in connection with the bombing. In December 1957, the Nashville School Board implemented the Parent Preference Plan, allowing black students to attend other white schools in the city. This plan he adopted on June 18, 1958.
