title
A resolution honoring the life of Civil Rights leader King Hollands.
body
WHEREAS, Mr. King Madison Hollands was born on November 29, 1941, to parents Edward Harvey Hollands and Irene Madison Hollands; and
WHEREAS, a Nashville native, he became one of the first 14 Black students to integrate Father Ryan High School in the fall of 1954. On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled racial segregation in schools unconstitutional in the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education; and
WHEREAS, Mr. Hollands became a leader and participant in the Nashville Student Movement in 1959, challenging racial segregation in Nashville; and
WHEREAS, he studied physics at Fisk University where he met Jim Lawson, Diane Nash, John Lewis, and Bernard Lafayette, who fought racial segregation through protests; and
WHEREAS, Mr. Hollands had been trained in nonviolent protest at the famous Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee, where Rosa Parks and the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. were also trained by longtime union organizer Myles Horton; and
WHEREAS, Mr. Hollands was arrested in February 1960 for participating in a lunch counter sit-in at Woolworth's and spent two weeks in jail; and
WHEREAS, Mr. Hollands continued to be an active community leader, helping to found and lead the Nashville Civil Rights Veterans Association ("NCRVA"), with the purpose of preserving the historical legacy of the Nashville Movement by engaging in narrative presentations to groups, especially the youth. The week that he passed away, he was set to be part of ceremony where NCRVA received the "Fannie Lou Hamer Human Rights Defender Award" at Tennessee State University.; and
WHEREAS, Mr. Hollands sought to preserve African American history in Nashville and also vigorously worked to protect and care for the Edgehill neighborhood, where he grew up. He was also part of the effort to save the Morris building and worked on saving Woolworth's and the homes of local civil rights figures like Z. Al...
Click here for full text