#OnThisDay 1951 NAACP civil rights attorney Z. Alexander Looby was elected to the Nashville, TN city council, which helped Black people make political advances in the south.

Who was Z. Alexander Looby? Glad you asked.

Mr. Looby was a lawyer in Nashville, Tennessee who was active in the Civil Rights Movement. Born in Antigua, he immigrated to the United States at the age of 15, and earned degrees at Howard University, Columbia University Law School, and New York University.

When he was five, his mother died while giving birth to a sibling. His father died when Looby was a teenager. The youth moved to the United States in 1914 as an orphan when he was fifteen years old. Looby attended Howard University and = Omega Psi Phi fraternity.

He graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1922. He went on to earn a law degree in 1925 from Columbia University in New York City, and a doctorate in jurisprudence from New York University in 1926.

Pause right here for a second. This brother, who was orphaned, moved to an entirely different country, graduates from two of this nation's greatest universities, and pledges the ALPHA CHAPTER of Omega Psi Phi (if you have attended an HBCU . . . chile . . . ).

Carry on.

He moved to Nashville, Tennessee where he was an economics professor at Fisk University. In July 1928, he passed the Tennessee bar exam and opened his own practice. In 1932, he helped found the Kent College of Law in Nashville.

Looby was part of the defense team organized by the NAACP for black men charged in the Columbia race riot of 1946. Looby worked with white attorney Maurice Weaver from Chattanooga and Thurgood Marshall of the Legal Defense and Educational Fund of the NAACP.

So what was the Columbia Race Riot all about?

Glad you asked!

The race riot in Columbia, Tennessee, a town of 10,911, from February 25 to 28, 1946 was early example of post-World War II racial violence between African Americans and whites in the United States.

On February 25, 1946, James Stephenson, a World War II veteran, and his mother, Gladys Stephenson, went to Castner-Knott, a local department store, to pick up the radio they had taken for repair, not knowing it had been sold to another customer.

When Mrs. Stephenson demanded the radio, William Fleming Jr., a store employee, confronted her. Defending his mother who was being verbally abused, Stephenson began fighting Fleming and threw him through a window, injuring him. Stephenson and his mother were arrested.

Both pleaded guilty and received a $50 fine. The Stephensons were arrested again after William Fleming Sr. filed charges on behalf of his son for assault with the intent to commit murder. Julius Blair, a local Black businessman, posted the Stephensons’ bond+ they were released.

During the same time, however, a white mob after hearing about the fight between Fleming and Stephenson, gathered at the Maury County Courthouse while Black townspeople came together in Mink Side, a Black business section.

Concern about the fight and the possibility of mob violence against the entire Black community, prompted Black ppl to arm themselves. They decided to turn out the lights in Mink Side and began shooting out the streetlights.

Hearing the gunshots, the Columbia Police Chief sent four patrolmen to Mink Side. More shots rang out and the four officers were wounded. Following the shooting, Tennessee State Safety Commissioner Lynn Bomar led other police officers and state highway patrolmen into Mink Side.

When they arrived, they began indiscriminately firing into buildings, searching homes, confiscating weapons, and, according to some, stealing residents’ property. During the confrontation, more than one hundred Black women and men were arrested.

On February 28, 1946, the Maury County deputies began questioning the prisoners about the shooting of the policemen. Three black men were singled out as most likely responsible: James Johnson, William Gordon, and Napoleon Stewart.

During the interrogation, Tennessee highway patrolmen arrived and took the three men, whom they accused of shooting at them, to the sheriff’s office. Two of the prisoners, Johnson and Gordon, took weapons from the officers and began shooting at the other patrolmen.

The patrolmen returned fire, killing both Johnson and Gordon and injuring one other prisoner. Stewart was not injured during the shooting. Walter White of the NAACP + counsel Thurgood Marshall, came to Columbia to organize a defense for the remaining prisoners.

Defending with Marshall? Z. Alexander Looby of Nashville and Maxwell Weaver of Chattanooga, for the upcoming trial. Looby and Marshall tag-teamed on the lead for this case, in which aside from the defendants,

THEY WERE THE ONLY BLACK PEOPLE IN COURT.

Twenty-five Columbia Black men were tried on charges of shooting at white policemen in nearby Lawrenceburg, Tennessee. On October 4, 1946, an all-white jury surprisingly found only two of the twenty-five blacks guilty, and the charges were later dropped against the other three.

Pause here for a second. Against an all-white jury, judge, and police department, Z. Alexander Looby, Thurgood Marshall and Maxwell Weaver got NOT GUILTY verdicts for 25 Black men, accused of murder, in 1946.

That's Z. Alexander Looby. And his team.

Respect.

Looby fought for changes in Nashville from at-large to district seats and getting rid of poll taxes. In May 1951 Looby was elected to the Nashville City Council, along with another lawyer, Robert Lillard.

After the United States Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) that segregation of public schools was unconstitutional, Looby filed a suit in Nashville for a child who was denied admission to a traditionally white school.

Looby started the school desegregation movement in Nashville, TN. Beginning in February 1960, councilman Looby defended the students arrested in the Nashville sit-ins to achieve integration of public places.

Among others, they included John Lewis and Diane Nash, students at Fisk University. Ms. Nash has on eyeglasses.

His law associates Avon Nyanza Williams and Robert E. Lillard also were part of the defense team.[7] As a result of Looby's support of the students, his house was dynamited by segregationists on April 19, 1960.[8]

The house was nearly destroyed by the powerful bomb, which also blew out 140 windows at nearby Meharry Medical College, resulting in minor injuries to students. Neither Looby nor his wife, Grafta Mosby Looby, was harmed in the bombing.

Afterward students from Fisk University led 2500 protesters on a silent walk to city hall, where they confronted Mayor Ben West.[9] Diane Nash asked him, "Do you feel it is wrong to discriminate against a person solely on the basis of their race or color?"

West said "yes,' later explaining, "It was a moral question – one that a man had to answer, not a politician." By May lunch counters in Nashville were desegregated. By October, Looby and his team gained dismissal of the charges against 91 students.

Looby remained on the Nashville City Council for twenty years before retiring in 1971. He died in Nashville on March 24, 1972 at the age of 72. Looby’s life and works are commemorated by a Nashville library and community center named after him.

FIN/

Thank you, Z. Alexander Looby.

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z._Alexander_Looby
https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/looby-z-alexander-1899-1972/