As the culture editor of the scene, Erica Ciccarone, reported last week, Ernest “Rip” Patton has died. I’m not going to repeat everything Erica said. You can read it yourself. Like Kwame Lillard, who died in December, he was a real hero. And like all Nashville civil rights activists, he seemed under-recognized by the wider city during his lifetime, and it remains to be seen how he will be honored now.
Another civil rights icon, Matthew Walker Jr., who was born, raised and died in Nashville, has been dead for five years and there is no street named after him. No talk of renaming a park in his honor. Hell, any town with a good sense of poetic justice would have named a pool in a park after him years ago. We as a whole city did nothing.
So I’m a little pessimistic as to whether the city of Dr. Patton will honor at all, and if so, whether it matters.
I have two opinions. One is that honoring black Nashvillians after they’re dead means very little to us, as we are actively destroying black neighborhoods and making it difficult for black people living to live here. If blacks want to scoff at the city for performative bullshit now that the people are dead, we as a city probably deserve it.
But I’m more inclined to believe that it’s important for the city to take its lumps and hear these reviews and still honor civil rights activists. Putting people’s names in public spaces at least lets others know that they are someone to remember, maybe even someone worth Googling. We were one of the epicentres of one of the most transformative social change movements this nation has ever seen. In the worst case, what can happen? We have a number of streets named after people Nashvillians should know? We teach high school and college aged children that people their ages have changed this city and the whole nation. As a city, we are reminded that there is a popular thing and a right thing and that isn’t always the same? That the people who are oppressed by the wrongdoing of society know that something is wrong and want it to be changed?
Rip Patton, photo from the book Breaking Peace: Portraits of the Mississippi Freedom Riders from 1961 by Eric Etheridge
As a white person in Nashville, I think that white Nashville is still very much indebted to a racial myth where white people are so great and have all these advantages and out of some kind of magnanimity should want social justice – of course we who have so much, should share with the poor unfortunate who have so little. These unfortunates could be any underprivileged community – immigrants, Latinos, LGBTQ people, etc. – but for now we are looking at this particular case. It’s condescending, but it’s condescension that at least leaves room for some social change.
But at this point I am convinced that the white Nashville has committed itself to this myth not only because it makes us feel good and makes us main characters in someone else’s story of liberation, but because we do not want to admit to ourselves or to others white People the way we pissed off white people through racism.
This, I think, is easiest to see in the school situation in Nashville in the 1950s. Yes, black schools were deeply neglected by the school system and had insufficient resources compared to white schools. This is true. But black teachers often had masters or doctorates. I’ve heard stories from professors at TSU who taught at Pearl High School when needed. And white teachers were not held to these standards.
If desegregation were planned for the benefit of all – including white students – all students would have access to the resources they need and all students would have access to the best teachers. White students would have had these black masters or PhD teachers. But for us as a racist society it was more important to strengthen the idea that white schools are better than black schools and white teachers are better than black teachers and that black teachers cannot have authority over white children than making sure that white students get it the best education they can have.
You can still see a similar dynamic now. The two best working Nashville historians we have right now are Linda Wynn and Learotha Williams. It’s just a fact. I was at the Nashville Conference on African American History and Culture, whose founder Dr. Wynn is, and by and large the white students there are from MTSU. I know Dr. Williams was invited to speak across town, but like many local white teachers, bring Nashville white students into Dr. Williams at TSU? How many white children with a taste for Nashville history are encouraged to go to TSU to study with Dr. Williams to study?
People teaching Nashville history to white Nashville children still aren’t putting white Nashville students into predominantly black rooms where they would learn from the best working Nashville historians we have right now. We still value their expertise no more than our own comfort to our own detriment.
And we fail to honor these Nashvillians who fought to give us all a fairer city – and a fairer country – to our detriment.
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