When News Channel 5 investigative journalist Phil Williams posted the photo of the burning cross to his social media account on Saturday, it predictably went viral. “This is a photo of an actual burning cross here in Tennessee,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “Monday on @NC5 at 6pm I get the disturbing results of my ongoing investigation into the rise of hate in the Volunteer State!”
The post and subsequent report — detailing the activities of self-described Nazis, Ku Klux Klan members and supporters of other white supremacist hate groups — is something that draws near-universal condemnation. It’s the lowest hanging fruit of hate, the stuff that can easily be dismissed as a relic of an uglier past. Like an echo of K. Dot on a DJ Mustard beat, cultured, progressive Nashvillians exclaim, “They don’t love us.”
This sentiment is not new. In Nashville, it goes back at least to the modern civil rights movement, when racist terrorists threw dynamite at schools, churches and the homes of black activists. If you had asked Nashville’s leaders at the time, nimble as they were in their PR activities, they would have said these actions were the domain of more violent cities in the Deep South.
In moderate Nashville, black and white residents got along well — or at least acted as if they did. There was no need for snakes, dogs, or homemade explosives when black people knew not to ask for too much and to stay in their right place.
But of course this was a lie. The shattered facades of attorney Z. Alexander Looby’s home and Hattie Cotton Elementary were evidence.
Hate doesn’t always terrorize people in obvious ways
Meanwhile, if we are conditioned to respond only to the extreme – to the hatred that stands out in the hoods and crosses that burn in the night – we miss the less prominent inequalities that make life far more untenable than the occasional Nazi parade. I do not at all diminish the effect of this variety of malignant hatred; After all, I am the grandchild of a man born in 1931 in Centreville, Mississippi, who fled to Kansas City to avoid the terror that tore grown men from their beds in the middle of the night.
More often, however, the hatred that currently terrorizes takes a different form. It looks like failing schools and gentrification. It looks like book bans and all-white boardrooms, even as DEI programs are dismantled. And in Nashville, as elsewhere, it seems like a police department corrupted by racism and prejudice and allowed to run amok.
Many people in the city probably wouldn’t call this hate. They would call it unhappy, or sad, or just the way things are. They would say that hate is what you get from the far right, not from “progressive” leaders in a “progressive” city like Nashville.
Rissi Palmer organizes an event, recalls Nashville of the abandoned country music for black women
That’s why, according to Nashville Scene columnist Betsy Phillips, so many (white liberal) readers responded with apathy to her column about the ongoing mess of the Metro Nashville Police Department — and, crucially, its attempts to evade accountability.
“I received a lot of feedback […]”, she wrote, “mostly along the lines of, ‘Well, we need police,’ and, ‘So you’re saying we don’t need laws or rules or…’”
These reactions are far from surprising. For those who don’t live in heavily policed neighborhoods, or who haven’t had a friend or loved one captured by the criminal justice system, the idea of ”bad cops” is just that — an idea. It’s theoretical. Vague. And historically, it has often been difficult for many potential allies to rush headlong into a fight with only theory to guide them.
Black Nashvillians deserve to have their voices heard and their needs met
It is entirely possible that MNPD could wreak havoc internally, among its own officers, and externally, among the citizens of Nashville, and still be viewed positively by many – no reforms are necessary.
In theoryBut like Dr. Sekou Franklin, a professor at Middle Tennessee University and former Nashville organizer, noted in an essay published by Tennessee Lookout, O’Connell’s response was “bland.” “O’Connell understands, I think, that policing needs to change,” Franklin wrote. “Yet understanding and doing are two different realities.”
O’Connell is clearly in a tough spot. This city has a long track record of Democratic mayors who won elections on the votes of black Nashvillians, but then did little to improve the material conditions of those black Nashvillians once in power. It is still far too early to know whether O’Connell will continue this tradition or chart his own course, but a crisis of this magnitude is a good indicator. Ultimately, like all politicians, he will have to decide whose needs to fulfill – and whose needs to overlook.
In the meantime, Nashville’s Black leaders must continue to apply the necessary pressure in hopes of bringing about the change most needed in our communities. And from my vantage point, the plan to block support for O’Connell’s Choose How You Move transit plan, proposed by the Nashville NAACP and Middle Tennessee chapter of the National Action Network, seems like the smartest play.
For years, Republicans have maintained a supermajority in Tennessee’s state legislature, while white Democrats have extolled the power of the individual vote. They are right to do so, of course, especially at the local level. As it stands, the Community Oversight Board that was created to hold the MNPD accountable has been dismantled by legislators acting in the best interest (or, in this case, offinterests) of their voters.
Rev. James Lawson fought against injustice with love and non-violence. The work is incomplete
So maybe while the rest of the city pats itself on the back for decrying Nazi marches and KKK flyers, Black Nashville should remind Mayor O’Connell of the interests of his constituents. And it should use the collective vote to its advantage.
Andrea Williams is an opinion columnist for The Tennessean and curator of the Black Tennessee Voices initiative. She has an extensive background in country music, sports, race and society. Email her at adwilliams@tennessean.com or follow her on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @AndreaWillWrite.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Black Nashville’s Needs Have Long Been Ignored. The MNPD Crisis Is Proof
