The Nashville Sit-Ins were among the earliest non-violent direct action campaigns that targeted Southern racial segregation in the 1960s. The sit-ins, which lasted from February 13 to May 10, 1960, sought to desegregate downtown lunch counters in Nashville, Tennessee. The protests were coordinated by the Nashville Student Movement and the Nashville Christian Leadership Council (NCLC), primarily consisting of students from Fisk University, Baptist Theological Seminary, and Tennessee State University. Diane Nash and John Lewis, who were both students at Fisk University, emerged as the major leaders of the local movement.
On February 13, 1960, twelve days after the Greensboro, North Carolina sit-ins began, Nashville college students entered Kress (now K-Mart), Woolworth’s, and McClellan stores at 12:40 p.m. After making their purchases, the students sat down at the lunch counters. Store owners initially refused to serve the students and closed the counters, claiming it was their “moral right” to determine whom they would or would not serve. The students continued the sit-ins over the next three months, expanding their targets to include lunch counters at the Greyhound and Trailways bus terminals, Grant’s Variety Store, Walgreens Drugstore, and major Nashville department stores, Cain-Sloan and Harvey.
The first violent response to the protests came on February 27, which James Lawson, Jr., another protest leader called “big Saturday.” The protesters that day were attacked by a white group opposing desegregation. The police arrested eighty-one protesters but none of the attackers. Those arrested were found guilty of disorderly conduct. They all decided to serve time in jail rather than pay fines.
As racial tension grew in Nashville, Mayor Ben West appointed a biracial committee to investigate segregation in the city. Despite the committee’s numerous attempts at a compromise, the students declared that they would accept nothing less than the acknowledgement of their rights to sit at the store lunch counters along with white customers. On April 5, the committee suggested that the counters be divided into black and white sections. The NCLC and the Nashville Student Movement rejected the proposal, arguing that segregation of the counters was no better than black exclusion from them.
On April 19, a bomb destroyed the home of Z. Alexander Looby, the defense attorney representing many of the protesters. The bombing of Lobby’s home triggered a mass march to city hall where 2,500 protesters demanded answers from Mayor West. Diane Nash pointedly asked Mayor West if it was wrong for a citizen of Nashville to discriminate against his fellow citizens because of his race or skin color. The mayor admitted that it was wrong, giving the students an important symbolic victory in their campaign. Nash then asked the mayor if the lunch counters in Nashville should be desegregated. They mayor said they should.
After weeks of secret negotiations between merchants and protest leaders, an agreement was finally reached during the first week of May. On May 10, six downtown stores opened their lunch counters to black customers for the first time; the customers arrived in groups of two or three during the afternoon and were served without incident. With that agreement, Nashville became the first major southern city to begin desegregating public facilities. The Nashville campaign became a model for other civil rights protests in the 1960s and 1970s.
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Nice! In my experience, crumbly tortillas means not enough hydration, usually from not letting the dough sit long enough - masa harina + water. At least 5 minutes, 10-15 is better. Sometimes just adding more water in general.
Masa harina itself varies in dryness by the bag so you end up needing to develop a feel for what the right consistency should be. Experiment with different amounts of water!
… I might have forgotten that step of letting them sit. I was impatient!
I mean the masa is right there, it’s very tempting to get started haha.
This might just be me but I was also getting crumbly tortillas more often when I started out and was using a rolling pin. I get better results with a cast iron press (got it for like $10 second hand) and the very traditional palm shaping method (mold into disc, put in palm, slap and rotate).
If I was fancy I would build a wood press
If I was cooking chilaquiles or tacos I’d probably try the palm shaping method, but it seems really unworkable to make big burrito tortillas that way - at least at my level of skill!
I also had a problem of not getting the pan hot enough at first, I think, and so actually getting the little browned bubbles to appear was challenging. The tortillas I made towards the end of the first batch came out way better than the first ones, thinner and softer and easier to roll. I’m going to be learning a lot doing this for sure.
Oh I don’t even try to make burrito sized corn tortillas. That’s a straight-up flour tortilla job imo. And those can definitely be rolling pin rolled! Though I admit I do tend to buy flour tortillas from the store instead. They keep in the refrigerator for months and you just wake them up on a hot pan. Flour tortillas are a little more annoying to make from scratch - more ingredients and a minimum 30 minute hydration wait, plus rolling is slower than a press. Not a big deal but the store-bought ones are like $5 for month supply.
But yeah palm shaped ones are only palm sizes. They make tiny but delicious tortillas. Don’t even need a filling, can just eat fresh as a snack.
Re: bubbles and such, the ideal is to have two temperatures to work with. A big comal is the classic. You start at the edge where it’s cooler to seal the outside on each side, then move to the hot center to rapidly release interior steam. This creates the puff that makes a tortilla (or any flat bread) have a nicer texture. You can stimulate this at home by using two pans. It’s also possible that your later tortillas were from dough that became more hydrated over time.