Fisk University and Pearl High School

Founded in 1866, Fisk University has long been a pillar in the Nashville community with a national reputation for academic excellence. Alumni and faculty include W. E. B. Du Bois, John Hope Franklin, Charles S. Johnson, Judge L. Howard Bennett, Congresswoman Frederica S. Wilson, and Nikki Giovanni. Fisk was a major site of Black intellectualism during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s. But it was also a major player in the Civil Rights movement.

We want to highlight three courageous students who went on to affect positive change in the world. The first is Marion Barry—who graduated with a master’s degree in 1960. Barry was elected the first Chairperson of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Barry later rose through the ranks of local government in Washington D.C., ultimately becoming the city’s mayor for a total of 26 years between 1978 and 2014. 

Next up is Matthew Walker Jr. We talked about his father, Matthew Walker Sr. at the previous stop. Matthew Jr. helped integrate Father Ryan, a local Catholic high school. He chose to attend Fisk and was active in the sit-in movement. Journalist Joey Garrison wrote, “Walker got his teeth knocked out during one protest, but remained steadfast in his belief in nonviolent demonstrations preached by The Rev. James Lawson.” In May 1960, he joined the Freedom Riders, which rode interstate buses from Montgomery, Alabama to Jackson, Mississippi to challenge policies that restricted travel. Walker was also a longtime community organizer, labor union leader with the AFL-CIO, and an active member at Clark Memorial Methodist.

Finally, Diane Nash—a Chicago native—came to Fisk to study English. “Then I got in the movement, and I knew that was my vocation – it became very clear,” Nash said. While many Civil Rights leaders were men, Diane was a woman who blazed trails as a strategist, activist, and organizer. A founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Nash led several Freedom Rides, married fellow activist James Bevel, and served jail time in Mississippi—while five months pregnant! You’ll hear more about her leadership at the next stop. In 2017, Patrisse Cullors, Black Lives Matter co-founder said: “Diane Nash’s [contribution defined] the courage of Black women the world over. . . . She changed America.”

Of course, one of Fisk’s best known alums is John Lewis—who you learned about on our second stop at American Baptist College. A year before his death in 2020, Fisk University opened The John Lewis Center for Social Justice in his honor. To learn more about this storied university, take our Fisk and Meharry walking tour or choose from two driving tours: Jefferson Street and Athens of the South.

While we won’t drive down the road to Martin Luther King Magnet School, we want to recognize the school’s Civil Rights history. Martin Luther King Magnet began as Pearl Senior High School—a public school for African Americans. In 1965, Pearl’s basketball team played Father Ryan High School in the first major integrated sports contest in Tennessee. A year later, Pearl won the TSSAA State Championship, the first year that African Americans were allowed to participate. The team’s star player, Perry Wallace, later attended Vanderbilt University and desegregated the SEC as a member of the men’s basketball team in 1967. Many Pearl alumni continued their educations at Fisk, TSU, and Meharry.

From Jackson St. turn RIGHT onto Dr. D.B. Todd Jr. Blvd. Look to your left as you drive between the Fisk and Meharry campuses to see the original Meharry campus buildings including Hubbard Hospital. Take the Fisk and Meharry walking tour to learn more. Turn LEFT onto Meharry Blvd. and park in the lot at 2014 Meharry. This was the home of Z. Alexander Looby and is our next stop.