Page 7 - Learotha Williams News Today

The fest goes virtual with a spine-tingling schedule of online readings and author talks

The house on Fisk property was once owned by a prominent Black family — and it narrowly escaped destruction

View Comments On Nov. 10, 1960, employees at a restaurant on Fifth Avenue used water hoses, wet brooms and a fumigation machine to try and drive John Lewis away from the lunch counter. He stayed put, clasping a white handkerchief over his mouth as acrid clouds of bug spray filled the room. When police and angry critics closed in during another sit-in at the Walgreens on Fifth Avenue, Lewis sat and wrote a sermon. Lewis became the face of a yearlong movement to desegregate the lunch counters in...

I’ll Take You There Is an Unflinching Exploration of Nashville’s Social Justice Sites Editors Amie Thurber and Learotha Williams’ guide to the city draws on the knowledge of more than 100 Nashvillians Tweet Share “You have in your hands a different sort of guidebook,” promises the first line of . “In place of offering a single voice and perspective on the city,” editors Amie Thurber and Learotha Williams write, “we offer a multitu...

The “aging infrastructure” of the 109-year-old institution and years of “deferred maintenance” have made for this and other decidedly not 21st-century conditions on campus.​ The university cant afford to pay for upkeep, much less advance its technological capabilities. It has been historically underfunded by the state of Tennessee and shortchanged hundreds of millions of dollars it was owed for at least 50 years. “I can’t overstress the dramatic effect [the underfunding has] had o...

March 9, 2021 Hearing overwhelming support to move the Nathan Bedford Forrest out of the State Capitol, the Tennessee Historical Commission voted Tuesday to relocate the embattled statue to the State Museum. Subscribe After a 25-1 decision, the bust of the Confederate lieutenant general will be moved with U.S. Admirals David Farragut and Albert Gleaves as part of a request by the State Capitol Commission for creation of a Hall of Heroes. Even so, the matter might not be done. Subscribe Lt. Gov....

Tweet Pete Meenen and the Tennesseans We Lost to COVID-19 The state’s first resident claimed by a virus that went on to kill many more On March 21, the Brentwood Family YMCA shared the news that Pete Meenen, a greeter at the gym and community center for more than 20 years, had died. He was the first person in Tennessee to die from COVID-19.  “Perhaps few faces in a YMCA are as recognizable as the greeter who meets the morning faithful, the early risers who start their day with us w...

Nashville Civil Rights Leader and Freedom Rider Kwame Lillard Dies at 81 An organizer of Nashville sit-ins, Lillard led and inspired generations of activists for 60 years Tweet Photo courtesy of African American Cultural Alliance Nashville Kwame Lillard, a Freedom Rider who carried the scars, lessons and memories of the civil rights struggle through a life of activism, died Sunday night. He was 81. One of the few organizers of Nashville’s 1960s sit-ins still living, Li...