If South Nashville is where I felt true love, Cameron High School is where I learned what community really looks like. The graduates of Cameron High School, now Lead Magnet, go beyond exemplifying the age-old saying – raise up a child in the way they should go and they will not depart from it. This was the common thread felt during The South Nashville and Cameron High School: Then + Now program led by Dr. Andre Churchwell, Senior Advisor to the Chancellor on Inclusion and Community Outreach at Vanderbilt University. He was the catalyst for the Vanderbilt Then + Now Series. “Maintaining culture and ensuring stories about underrepresented groups are saved and why this Then + Now Series is an important platform to tell these stories,” shares Dr. Churchwell.
I had the pleasure of attending not due to Urbaanite but due to my amazing Mother, Ida Yvonne Currie (Venson) who was one of the featured speakers. When I say she is a Cameronite through and through. I can remember so many stories she shared that always ended with a Cameron moment. From the long-lasting bonds with her friends, walking with her brother to school to the teachers like Mrs. Washington and their true care for them as students. To her academics, which was taken very seriously by all students, including setting the foundation for her to attend Tennessee State University on scholarship.
They were taught in an era of segregation, Jim Crow, and a city filled with hatred. However, they were filled with love, knowledge, kindness, worthiness, belief, and integrity through the halls of their beloved school. As one beautiful woman shared during the event,” We left our parents for school each day to go to our “parents” in school”. What a testament to their experience and why this school and the Nashville community are still so dear even after gentrification swept through their “Out South” roots.
Yes, many may now know these areas as “12 South, WeHo and Chestnut Hill”. Interesting names created by those just moving to the area but having no real sense of the history and hollowed grounds that so many African American people walked, built, thrived and lived for many years before. They raised beautiful families and had stately homes. I remember my grandmother’s house right at the corner of Elliott and Acklen across from the old Mt. Gilead Church location. She was my first view into entrepreneurship and investing as she would rent out her top-floor apartment. Her home was always so massive to me as I would explore different areas each time I was there, sometimes rooms that were considered off-limits and only “for company”. But see, these homes were loved and cared for. These streets were safe to adventure out and walk to your relatives’ home down the street or the neighborhood market off 8th.
See, these were just some of the memories evoked when I sat and listened to the amazing program on South Nashville and Cameron High School. It reinforced how blessed I truly was to be born into such a loving, warm family but also how deep those roots run. How connected we all are whether you are blood or not.
The stories shared were incredible from a look into the Bass Street community, to the story of Leander Woods. The South Nashville man who took on the Klan and won to protect his community neighborhood in Fort Negley. The 4300+ enslaved people who fought in the Battle of Nashville, making it the largest battle of the Civil War with African American soldiers. To the story Urbaanite had an opportunity to share by three childhood friends (my lovely mother being one) who decided to make a documentary on one of the biggest civil rights moments in Cameron’s history, The Past is Prologue. The story shared the impact of the 1968 unfair and racially fueled suspension of Cameron High School’s entire athletic department for that year.
You can view the full program on YouTube and it will also be archived in the Nashville Public Library’s Special Collections space. Through this Vanderbilt series all of their Then + Now events on Nashville’s hidden gem communities will be housed there for many to take in for generations to come.
Lastly, for those that are new to this city of ours I would challenge you to do a quick google search or seek out the closest historical marker near your neighborhood to educate yourself on where you are living now. For us Nashville natives, take some time to stop by and check-in your senior relatives. Sit at their feet, ask them a few questions, record it and make sure you are absorbing it all so you can keep their stories alive. We need them for our legacy and future generations.
Photography: Vanderbilt University + Urbaanite
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Amazing story as experienced by the speakers and beautifully captured by the Urbaanite editor!
Thank you!!