Justin Jones

Full disclosure: I am professionally employed Vanderbilt University Medical Center. The Medical Center, though a separate fiscal and legal entity, shares the Vanderbilt name with Vanderbilt University, whose press publishes this book.

Nashville, Tennessee, is a historic town in the movement for civil rights. In fact, locals just call it the “movement.” That movement is very much alive, in Nashville and in America, as the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 have recently shown. This book details how these sparks fared in Nashville on statehouse grounds. The lineage of Nashvillians Dr. James Lawson, Dr. Martin Luther King, and John Lewis stand strongly behind the described events. This account reminds us that these giants were once unfairly painted as radicals.

Although the 2020 group stayed relatively nonviolent, their protests were met with state police and national guard backlash. The state spent around $1 million trying to keep dozens of protesters “in check” and $200,000 in a special session to make the protests illegal. (So much for fiscal conservatism!) Jones details the care the protesters took to remain nonviolent and how they were joined by clergy troubled by the rise of state-sanctioned violence against black people. (Jones himself studied at a divinity school.)

Tennessee, especially in its abundant rural regions, has moved rightward politically in the last couple of decades. Its Republican state government can seem oppressive to major sections of the population as Jones demonstrates. Although Jones fills out the description of the strategy and the protests well, the rationales for the policy aims of the protests seems scant (in this book, at least). I wish Jones would have incorporated a chapter or two on potentially positive impacts of the group’s aims. Voicing these aims can/must help win over a white middle that resists extremism on either side. In terms of accomplishments, the protests did topple – physically and legislatively – two statues of Confederate-era “heroes” from statehouse grounds.

The title of this book comes from the name of the plaza that this group occupied. Playing off the nickname of a state house as the “people’s house,” they nicknamed the place they occupied as the “people’s plaza.” They showed and this narrative documents that state power, even in America, resembled state-sanctioned terror and unnecessary and unreasoned harassment. While many might be content to stop with television images of protest from 2020, reading this book uncovers many deeper issues that need addressing in the abuse of authority. It frankly makes some of the powerful players – especially Tennessee’s governor and legislature – look incredibly petty, silly, and frivolous. If American democracy is to survive and even flourish, we must heed Jones’ admonitions to do better to all in society.… (mais)