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From the steps of the state capitol Frederick John Kasper, 27, the tall, hawk-faced agitator from Camden, N.J., began to whip up the crowd. "The Constitution of the U.S. gives you the right to carry arms," he said. "If one of these niggers pulls a razor or a gun on us, we'll give it to 'em . . . When they fool with the white race they're fooling with the strongest race in the world, the most bloodthirsty race in the world." Hot-eyed Rabble-rouser John Kasper mentioned the name of one of Nashville's Negro civic leaders and dramatically held up a rope, then talked hazily about dynamite.
City officials stood by, disdaining to interfere for fear of infringing the right of free assembly. They knew that the tradition of segregation was hard to break, and they were tolerant of the protesting crowds, which broke up without open disorder. But before another dawn Nashville was to be blasted into a changed mood.
Half an hour after midnight the city was rocked by a thunderous dynamite blast that shattered a wing of the seven-year-old, $500,000 Hattie Cotton Elementary School where one five-year-old Negro girl had registered the day before. The blast ripped doors off hinges, cracked plaster and scattered bricks and glass in thick, ugly layers across the surrounding schoolyard and walks. "A hellish explosion—just like God had whispered in my ear," said one nearby resident.
The Realization. Dazedly the good people of Nashville began to recognize the horror of what had occurred. Those elements of officialdom, press and public that had stood aside from the battle were shocked into a new appreciation of law and order. "Ain't things got terrible?" wailed one frail old woman who had demonstrated against integration only the day before. "This is no longer a matter of segregation or desegregation," said one school official. "This is a matter of sheer lawlessness. We're up against thugs."
When white segregationists rallied outside the schools for a second day's harassment of Negro children, they found themselves facing hard-eyed policemen and barricades, backed by a city of conscience aroused as rarely before. At one point a Negro minister escorting a little girl from school was bombarded with stones; he turned upon the white crowd and drew a pistol. The police arrested him, but he was quickly freed on bond. After the minister made a public statement regretting his resort to force, one of the arresting officers spoke with a kind of tolerance that was different from the previous day's. "These people," he said, "have been pushed pretty hard."