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GALLATIN, TENNESSEE—a town of less than thirty thousand residents today and half that number in the 1960s—is located twenty-five miles north of Nashville. Situated along the banks of the meandering Cumberland River, Gallatin has a Mayberry-like look and feel to it. It was founded in 1802 as an industrial town with both railroad and river access, and by the mid-1960s many of the local blue-collar workers were employed in the shirt or shoe factories.

Most of the population was white. Negroes comprised less than 10 percent of Gallatin’s population; therefore, few people in town talked much about the racial tension seething in the South in places such as Montgomery, Selma, Birmingham, and, of course, Memphis. Quite the opposite seemed to be the norm. Ask any of the fellas congregating in downtown Gallatin at the whites-only pool hall, and one of them would quickly tell you, “We don’t have any problems with coloreds around here. We all get along just fine. Coloreds know their place.”

And they did.

The lines were clearly delineated, drawn on the basis of skin color. Gallatin had white stores—stores in which Caucasians were welcome and African Americans were not, although nobody used those terms. They were simply “white folks” or “coloreds.” On one side of Main Street stood white stores; on the other side, colored stores, where blacks could shop. Whites could shop at the colored stores if they wanted to, but they rarely did. The town had a white park and a black park in which kids could play. The black children were not permitted to play in the park for white kids—ever.

Like most towns in the Southern United States during the mid-1960s, Gallatin maintained elements of segregation long after the dark-robed judges in Washington, DC, ruled otherwise. Gallatin still had separate water fountains for whites and coloreds. It wasn’t unusual to see a sign prominently posted above one of the fountains: WHITE ONLY. Gallatin also had segregated swimming pools. Whites refused to get into the water if a black person had somehow been invited to swim in the white pool. And a young black man could find himself in jail, beaten or, in years past, hanging from a rope if he dared stare at a white woman in a bathing suit.

Blacks purposely avoided walking down the sidewalk in the direction of whites. An unspoken rule demanded that if a white person or a black person inadvertently approached someone of the other race, somebody must veer off in another direction. Usually that somebody was the black person. Most colored people avoided even stepping into certain sections of Gallatin.

Instead, they stayed in their familiar neighborhoods, two or three streets off Main Street where the black businesses were located. There they could relax at Joey’s Place, the pool hall for blacks.

The barbershop for blacks was also downtown, in addition to a shoe-shine business up the street and the dry cleaners. Clothing worn by black people was never permitted to mingle with clothing worn by white folks. The black people also had their own dance hall in that part of town. A grocery store stood nearby, where only coloreds shopped.

Both Eddie Sherlin and Bill Ligon attended Sumner County schools, of which Gallatin schools were a part. By the early 1960s, the county had seven public high schools, six of which were predominantly attended by white students, and one school—only one—Union, a county-wide school, was designated as a “colored” school. Students walked great distances to get there; others rode a school bus for more than an hour each way.

The US Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education landmark decision in 1954 declaring that schools should be fully integrated swept through the South like a raging tornado, often leaving a path of emotional turmoil and destruction. In many Southern cities, the white power base balked. “Over my dead body will I let a colored boy in the same classroom as my daughter.” Many of the whites opposed to integration simply didn’t want change. Others were deadly serious in their resistance. The long-entrenched attitude of community leaders was “Blood will flow in the streets first.” And in many Southern towns and cities such as Birmingham, Montgomery, and even “sophisticated” Atlanta, it did.

In Tennessee, school boards, as well as teachers, were reluctant to give up racial segregation in the classrooms. The Sumner County school district dragged its feet; it was one of the last in the South to open its doors to students of all races.

“We’re doin’ just fine. Why do we want to mess with a system that is working?” was a question posed mostly by whites but also frequently voiced by blacks who were willing to maintain the status quo. Many of Gallatin’s Negro population were reluctant to speak out about racial issues.

White folks were equally intimidated. White people who spoke in favor of integration would quickly be tagged with a pejorative, tarnishing their reputations in town and making them the targets of horrendous verbal abuse. Such a label had an impact on a person’s ability to get a job, open or maintain a business, and, in some instances, it could be life-threatening.

This was the racially charged environment in which Eddie Sherlin and Bill Ligon lived the first eleven years of their lives.

Few people thought it would ever change.