Betsy Phillips’s book Dynamite Nashville offers fascinating and exhaustively researched insights into integration-era Nashville (as well as the rest of the United States).
Pursuit Magazine wrote of the book:
“A Nashville historian digs into a series of unsolved bombings from the era of integration and discovers a trove of suspects, an oddly recalcitrant law enforcement agency, and a wall of silence.”
In her own words, here is Betsy Phillips’s Book Notes music playlist for her book Dynamite Nashville:
The central thrust of my book is that I set out to solve three integration-era bombings that happened here in Nashville– the Hattie Cotton school bombing in September, 1957, the Jewish Community Center bombing in March, 1958, and the attempted assassination of city councilman and civil rights attorney, Z. Alexander Looby in April, 1960—and I found a loose network of terrorists that worked across the South throughout the Civil Rights Era. But, at heart, it’s about the lengths some assholes will go to deny the humanity of their fellow Americans and deprive them of their basic freedoms. In other words, these are people who looked at what was, for them, modern culture and decided it needed to be violently opposed, which included targeting the people who made that culture. The two most prominent figures in this network were J.B. Stoner, who there’s no reason for you to know, except he was once James Earl Ray’s attorney, and Asa Carter, who went on to be one of Alabama Governor George Wallace’s speechwriters, penning the “Segregation now! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!” speech and who then reinvented himself as Forrest Carter and created the character, The Outlaw Josie Wales.
“That’s All Right”/ “Blue Moon of Kentucky”
Elvis Presley
When you listen to Elvis now, I think pretty much everybody has Public Enemy’s critique of him in their minds, “Elvis was a hero to most, but he never meant shit to me, you see, straight out racist.” And I’m not here to bring you along on some Elvis redemption tour, but if there is any way for you to set aside the child bride and the song-stealing and, well, everything, and listen to this fresh, I think you can hear why racists in the 1950s hated Elvis and hated the music he played. This was the first record he released, on Sun Records, back in 1954. The A side is a cover of Arthur Crudup’s “That’s All Right,” which Crudup recorded in 1946. It’s worth seeking out Crudup’s version, as well, both because it’s really good and because you can hear how little Elvis changed it. Elvis thought it was great just how it was. Now, flip over to “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” originally recorded by Bill Monroe. Elvis switched it from a waltz to 4/4 time. He also fixed Monroe’s ridiculous decisions on where to place the emphasis on words in the song. (In the phrase, “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” no one needs the “of” to be the most stressed syllable, Bill.)
I don’t think Elvis meant this as some grand stand against a belief in the inherent inferiority of Black people, but it sure seems like men like Asa Carter took it that way. After all, the Crudup song was basically fine as is, but Elvis completely overhauled the Monroe song to fit his style—his style being “white kid singing songs in the style of Black people.” When Asa Carter was denouncing rock ‘n’ roll at Klan rallies, in Nashville in 1957, he meant Elvis.
“Little Girl”
Nat King Cole Trio
On April 10, 1956, Nat King Cole was performing with an all-white band in front of an all-white audience in Birmingham, Alabama. As he started singing “Little Girl,” racists led by Asa Carter stormed the stage and attacked him. Kenneth Adams, who would go on to lead the attack against the Freedom Riders in Anniston, Alabama, in 1961, beat Cole until police were able to pull him away.
Cole, and Louis Armstrong, who we’ll talk about next, faced a lot of criticism for not being more involved in the Civil Rights Movement. I’m not Black, so that’s not a fight I want to weigh in on with any authority, but Cole certainly learned the names of his attackers, which means that, from this point on, as they would show themselves to be more and more dangerous, Cole would have been reminded repeatedly that these were the people who attacked him. My instinct is to extend nothing but sympathy and respect to Cole, since he came face to face with some of the most evil people of his time and he lived through the encounter when they did not want him to.
“Back o’ Town Blues”
Louis Armstrong
On January 19, 1957, Louis Armstrong was playing a concert in Knoxville, Tennessee, with a mixed-race band. He was in the middle of “Back o’Town Blues,” when a bomb went off just outside the venue. After Armstrong and his band regrouped, Armstrong joked with the crowd, “That sounded like a drunk falling out of the balcony.” Then he finished the show. I repeat: he finished the show.
I deeply suspect that this bombing was committed by men in the network I investigated. J.B. Stoner had been visiting Knoxville regularly ever since he rechartered the Klan in Chattanooga in the 1940s, when he was in high school. Asa Carter had an office in nearby Clinton, Tennessee, and racist activist, John Kasper, got a lot of financial support from Knoxville racists. But I never could nail down who committed the bombing, so I can’t say for certain that it’s tied in with the later bombings I was looking into.
“Blue Hawaii”
Frank Sinatra
In 1958, Sinatra released his album, “Come Fly With Me.” I never really got the appeal of Sinatra. I’m a Dino gal, myself (Elvis was, too). But when I listen to his rendition of “Blue Hawaii,” I kind of get it. The more relevant thing Sinatra released in 1958 was the movie, “Kings Go Forth.” I had never heard of it before I started doing research for Dynamite Nashville, but racists wrote so very much about this film and how much they hated it and how much they hated Frank Sinatra because of it. The plot, in short, is “two guys during World War 2 fall in love with a French girl, but it turns out she’s mixed race.” The love interest, Monique, is played by Natalie Wood, but she didn’t come in for nearly the criticism Sinatra did. (Sinatra has a song, “Monique,” for the movie, but it is terrible and I don’t recommend it.) What I find especially interesting about this is that in previous generations, this probably wouldn’t have upset racists that much, if at all, since Hollywood regularly had white actors portray people of color so that, in part, they could show white people interacting with people of color without violating the huge taboo of actually depicting positive cross-racial interactions.
But, I guess, by 1958, with the rise in popularity of rock ‘n’ roll and rhythm and blues, it must have burned racists that they were running out of good musicians from the Big Band (or as my dad calls it, “music to hug your girlfriend to”) era who might seem to be on their side. What music did they have left if Sinatra liked Black women and white musicians wanted to play with the likes of Nat King Cole and Louis Armstrong? Country? Elvis was already a regular on the Louisiana Hayride and, by 1956, he was in Nashville recording with Chet Atkins. Music was moving on and the racists were having a tantrum about it.
“Go Tell It on the Mountain”
Mahalia Jackson
“Go Tell It on the Mountain”
Fannie Lou Hammer
Early in the morning of April 19, 1960, racists bombed the home of Z. Alexander Looby. The bomb was strong enough to blow a huge hole in Looby’s neighbor’s house, break all the windows in the dorm of Meharry Medical College across the street, and even some windows over at Fisk University, two blocks away. By all rights, the front of Looby’s house should have been blown to kingdom come, which would have collapsed the house on top of Looby and his wife, Grafta. Except for one thing: when Looby bought the house from the heirs of Frederick Work, it was a white wooden house, but when it was bombed, it was a brick house. But the old wooden walls were still there. You can see the front wall in the pictures in the aftermath of the bombing and the two layers—clapboard and brick—are obvious. I think those double-thick exterior walls kept the house standing long enough for the Loobys to make their escape.
But back to Frederick Work. There is no short way to tell you who Frederick Work was that properly contextualizes him and his family, but I’m going to try. John Work had been enslaved. After the Civil War he came to Nashville and he became a choir leader. Many of the original Fisk Jubilee Singers were also in his church choir. He had two sons, John Work Jr. and the aforementioned Frederick Work. John Jr. and Frederick both worked at Fisk and were heavily involved with the Fisk Jubilee Singers. They were also some of the, if not the, first Black scholars to collect what were known at the time as “Negro Spirituals” and other African-American folk songs. John Jr. had two sons: John III and Frederick. John III first recorded Muddy Waters and Frederick desegregated Vanderbilt University’s school of law.
It’s now believed that Frederick Work, likely in that house, probably wrote “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” that he was inspired by the music he was collecting and he wanted to try his hand at it. This makes “Go Tell It on the Mountain” a fake folk song. At least at first. A hell of a song—listen to any version ever recorded by Mahalia Jackson and prepare for transcendence—but not some traditional “Negro spiritual.”
But then the Civil Rights Movement got a hold of it. Go listen to Fannie Lou Hammer’s version. All the verses are completely different and borrowed from other folk songs. The chorus is now “Go tell it on the mountain, over the hills and everywhere. Go tell it on the mountain: let my people go.” It became a folk song! The thing Frederick tried to do was done by the movement Looby was fighting for.
“Birmingham Sunday”
Joan Baez
This song is so beautiful but, damn, I hope I never hear it again. I have only listened to “Birmingham Sunday” a handful of times. It fills me with such grief and anger that I feel like I might suffocate in it. I can’t bear it. And this is 2024. I can’t imagine the impact it had when it was released in 1964.
Very early on in my research, I came across Rev. Petric Smith’s book, Long Time Coming: An Insider’s Story of the Birmingham Church Bombing that Rocked the World. Smith was assigned female at birth and originally named Elizabeth Cobbs. Cobbs’ uncle was 16th Street Baptist Church bomber, Robert Chambliss, aka Dynamite Bob, and Cobbs testified against Chambliss at trial. Cobbs/Smith’s testimony probably secured Chambliss’s conviction. Another man in that terror cell was Bobby Cherry, who had assaulted Birmingham pastor, Fred Shuttlesworth with brass knuckles in 1957, when he was a member of Asa Carter’s renegade Klan offshoot.
In his memoir, Rev. Smith repeatedly brings up that he was told that J.B. Stoner was somehow involved in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, that he may have even been the one to bring the dynamite into town. Rev. Smith wanted that to be looked into. (As a side note, I just want to make explicit that a trans man ensured Dynamite Bob went to prison. Keep that in mind when you see Southern states enacting all this anti-trans legislation.) I also learned that Robert Pittman Gentry, a racist bomber from Middle Tennessee, told a House Un-American Activities Committee investigator that he, too, had been in Birmingham right before the bombing. Stoner was Gentry’s lawyer. In other words, Rev. Smith did not believe we ever got the full story of the bombing and that the full story involved J.B. Stoner and his network of terrorists.
As I wrote Dynamite Nashville, I realized that all the stuff I’d uncovered was leading up to the murder of those four girls in Birmingham in 1963. Every bombing that Stoner or Carter or their friends were somehow tied up with was them learning what they would need to commit those murders and escape justice. I tried to keep in mind that, though I knew that, all the law enforcement agencies that half-heartedly investigated this stuff or, in the case of the FBI, made it harder for other law enforcement agencies to investigate, did not know this was leading up to dead children. But this is beyond my ability to sympathize, frankly. These bombers were stoppable before that Sunday morning and it is contemptable that they were not.
“Downtown”
Petula Clark
On Christmas Day, 2020, Anthony Quinn Warner drove an RV filled with explosives into the heart of downtown Nashville. At dawn, a recording blared out from the RV–the audio of three bursts of gunfire, an automated woman’s voice warning people to stay away from the vehicle and to evacuate the area. A fifteen minute timer started and then Petula Clark’s “Downtown” began to play. At the end of the countdown, the RV exploded, killing Warner, and sending eight people to the hospital. The explosion also destroyed a block of historic buildings from the 1880s and damaged structures all along 2nd Avenue.
The official line on this bombing–and I mean both what the FBI concluded and what Nashville authorities believe–is that Warner was a lone weirdo with a belief in aliens and lizard people who had a grudge against AT&T for whatever reason (his RV was parked right next to an AT&T facility) and no political motivations.
In the wake of the Unite the Right Rally in 2017, I had become increasingly aware of the influence the 1950s bombers and their cronies still had on the extreme rightwing. For instance, in the 1950s, Jack Kershaw had been a high-up member of the Tennessee Federation for Constitutional Government, which was a group of rich Tennessee segregationists that funneled money and legal help to violent racists. Kershaw then went on to help found The League of the South, which apparently funneled money to some of the more violent groups at the Unite the Right Rally. So, I was paying attention to rumored plots on the far right–including plans or dreams to figure out how to blow up “the grid.”
You can imagine my alarm when Warner managed to disable telecommunications networks throughout the region and then twelve days later, on January 6th, right wing extremists overran the Capitol. But I guess these things aren’t related. I had a friend in a position to know assure me it was just “lizard people and aliens,” but those lizard people conspiracy theories are usually, at heart, antisemitic conspiracy theories and the earlier Nashville bombers also believed some wild antisemitic conspiracies. I suppose the most I’m willing to concede is that Warner may not have blown up our downtown because of antisemitic beliefs, but those antisemitic conspiracy theories, even in watered-down form not immediately recognizable for what they are, poisoned him against humanity and let him give himself permission to steal a large chunk of downtown from the city.
“South’s Gotta Change”
Adia Victoria
Adia Victoria is what would happen if you mixed Billie Holiday, Muddy Waters, and Jim Morrison and then raised that baby on Eudora Welty and Toni Morrison. And every bit of this song is just brilliant at diagnosing the evils of the South, which are, ultimately, the evils of the whole nation.
The reason I wanted to end with it, though, is that a deep spring of compassion slices through this song. This may be a place full of people willfully lying to themselves in ways that cause them to harm others. It may be a place where people have tried so long to get justice that they are “tired of walking.” But there’s a new generation ready to pick up the work—“Let the children lead the way.” And Adia sings that this is a place filled with people who are worth fighting for “I love you, I won’t leave you Won’t let you slip away Come what may We’re gonna find a way.” And I believe that, too.
Betsy Phillips has written for the Nashville Scene and the Washington Post. Her fiction has appeared in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and Apex Magazine, among others. She was named 2019 Best Historian in the Best of Nashville edition of the Nashville Scene and serves on the board of Historic Nashville, Inc. She lives in Whites Creek, Tennessee.