This year's Nashville Nine centers on civil rights history

Buildings central to the city’s historic struggle against racial discrimination make up this year’s Nashville Nine. Historic Nashville Inc.’s annual list of sites “in danger of being lost to demolition, neglect or development” focuses on the homes of key civil rights figures and businesses that helped provide critical services for the city’s Black residents during segregation.

Five of the buildings are in North Nashville, where the city’s tight home market has driven up land prices. Over the past few years, single-family homes in the city’s historically Black neighborhoods have frequently been replaced with larger homes, sometimes with two or more units. The list also includes the home of Frankie Henry on Maury Street in Napier, another historically Black enclave between the Cumberland River and Lafayette Street. Henry was a civil rights activist burned with a cigarette by a white woman during a downtown sit-in.