After three months of sit-ins marked by a near-riot, mass arrests and the dynamiting of a Negro city councilman's home, urbane Nashville last week asserted its moderate nature by becoming the South's first city to yield to Negro demands for lunch-counter equality. Opened to Negroes after secret, month-long negotiations between businessmen and Negro leaders were lunch counters in half a dozen variety and department stores.
Bargaining was spurred by an effective Negro boycott and a sharp decline in white patronage following a melee downtown last month in which a Negro youth was badly beaten by white toughs. "Fear of violence...