Nashville now and then: New voices in the Old South

The Tennessean's beginnings in May 1907, signs of change on two fronts in May 1879, and the desegregation of Nashville's police force in May 1948
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Email | Print By E. Thomas Wood

Above: Day one for the Nashville Tennessean: May 12, 1907
Below: P. B. S. Pinchback, former governor of Louisiana

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One hundred years ago tomorrow, the first issue of the Nashville Tennessean hit the streets. An ambitious 28-year-old Nashvillian, Luke Lea, had apparently tapped deep sources of capital to bring together a team of journalists with impressive credentials, as showcased in a full-page spread with biographical notes on 14 scribes.

At the helm as editor was Herman M. Suter, a Pennsylvanian by birth who had been editing a trade journal in Washington, D.C. While in college at Sewanee, Suter had gotten to know a Nashville native by the name of Grantland Rice, who had made a name for himself nationally as a baseball writer. Rice was unhappy working for the Cleveland News, and when Suter offered him the formidable sum of $70 a week, he was happy to move his young family back to the old hometown.

The new paper hired away James I. Finney, political correspondent for the competing Nashville American, and Anne Lewis Sevier, assistant to the society editor of the Nashville Banner. City editor Frank Bell left the Commercial Appeal in Memphis to join Lea's staff, while editorial writer Genella Fitzgerald Nye (daughter of influential Methodist Bishop Oscar Penn Fitzgerald) came from Bob Taylor Magazine. Other hires came from papers and wire services as far away as New York and Los Angeles.

A statement published that first day set out the Tennessean's editorial goals: "The paper will be personal and human rather than encyclopedic. It will deal with men and women rather than with the abstract and impersonal."

And personal it was. The daily fare of the newspaper's early years was a textbook example of hyper-local journalism. Among the obituaries, weddings, school events, church news, club and society happenings and notices of such personal accomplishments as the purchase of an automobile (a topic of frequent coverage), it was not unusual for one day's issue to contain 300 or more names of local people within its news columns.

Grantland Rice would go on to fame elsewhere as a sportswriter, of course. James Finney was destined for bigger things, too, as the editor and publisher of Columbia's Daily Herald for 19 years, and then as editor of the Tennessean in the 1920s.

Putting the neighbors on notice

The Times of London reported on May 11, 1879: "The Nashville Coloured Convention closed at midnight after adopting an address to the public reciting the ill-treatment of the negroes in the South, their desire to continue there if well treated, but failing this, that their only alternative was emigration." Former Louisiana Governor P. B. S. Pinchback presented this resolution before a crowd filled with delegates from across the country. The son of an ex-slave and her master, Pinchback had become the nation's first African-American governor in the early days of Reconstruction.

In the months after the convention, tens of thousands of freedmen would elect to go west, many lured by the rumor that the government would furnish each family with "40 acres and a mule" upon arrival in Kansas. "In regard to the exodus," writes one contemporary observer, "public opinion in the South tends toward a policy of masterly inactivity."

Kate's coup

Just across town and, socially, a world away from the "colored" event, graduation week of 1879 featured a first at Vanderbilt University. Just prior to graduation day, as the board of trustees was meeting, an unusual item turned up on the agenda: A special vote to award an M.A. degree to Kate Lupton.

The daughter of chemistry prof Nathaniel Thomas Lupton, Kate eased her way into classes as an auditor before persuading professors at the new university to give her grades. It's an all-male school, of course. Girls don't go to college in these parts. But since Lupton has completed all necessary requirements, no one is in any position to argue against her graduation.

The board voted in her favor. Kate's fellow students had already taken the initiative, electing her as valedictorian (an honor she demurely refused). Chancellor Landon C. Garland wouldn't dare stand in the way of such popular sentiment. But, a man of his times, he handed Lupton her sheepskin in private. Her name did not appear on the official register of graduates. It would be 1897, the year of Kate's early death, before Vanderbilt admitted women as official students.

Progress, of a sort

Taking a cue from President Truman's quiet initiative to desegregate the armed forces, Mayor Thomas L. Cummings presented the news matter-of-factly: The first Negro officers would join Nashville's police force in May 1948. The Mayor took pains to assure white folk that his intentions were not revolutionary — black cops were simply better able to keep order among black people, he emphasized.

The seven new policemen would be confined to "Negro districts," sharing a single patrol car and avoiding any scrapes with white citizens unless white cops were involved. The initial class of recruits included former servicemen, a former Pullman porter and one man with a couple of old misdemeanors on his record. Despite a minor outcry over the hiring of the latter candidate, the new cops took up their beats without great controversy. But a Tennessean editorial did note that "in a sense they have a double task" since "their performance will be watched closely not only by members of their own race but by white citizens as well."

At least three of those first hires would go on to become veteran officers. One, John Wesley Smith Jr., would begin a family tradition of police service. Smith's son, John Wesley Smith III, would join the force as well — and would give his life in the line of duty in a 1980 traffic accident, as recounted (purely by small-town coincidence) in this week's Nashville Scene cover story. Four decades after the elder Smith joined the force, his grandson would serve as a Metro policeman.

"Nashville now and then" is a week-by-week look back at Nashville's economic, political and social history. Your thoughts, suggestions and questions are always welcome — leave them in the comments section below, or e-mail tom.wood@nashvillepost.com