A Force More Powerful: Nashville: We Were Warriors

One of 6 episodes in A Force More Powerful, an engaging series highlighting successful uses of Gandhi's principles of nonviolence to effect social change, Nashville: "We Were Warriors" traces the bold and brilliant 1960 lunch counter sit-in campaign led by the Rev. James Lawson. After studying in India for three years, Lawson began offering free evening classes on nonviolent action to university students in the fall of 1959, eventually recruiting both black and white students to launch a concerted effort to desegregate the city's business district. In the spring of 1960, as the media--and therefore the country--watched, black students were yanked off lunch counter seats and tossed into police wagons, only to be replaced by another peaceful wave of students. In each successive Saturday, more and more volunteers from the city either joined in or made a pledge to boycott downtown stores. Marching on city hall, one woman (interviewed here) asked Mayor Ben West for a reason why lunch counters should be desegregated, and his response--which made headline news--was that he couldn't see one. A powerful example of the extraordinary sacrifices that the almost exclusively nonviolent African-American activists made to secure their constitutional rights during the Civil Rights movement of the '60s, Nashville: "We Were Warriors" is recommended. The other titles in the series (series price: $399), each of which will stand alone, are: Chile: "Defeat of a Dictator", Poland: "We've Caught God by the Arm", South Africa: "Freedom in Our Lifetime", India: "Defying the Crown" and Denmark: "Living with the Enemy". Aud: H, C, P. (R. Pitman)