Leaders Mark 50th Anniversary of Nashville Sit-ins: NASHVILLE, Tenn.— Civil rights leaders observing Saturday's 50th anniversary of the sit-in movement that would integrate Nashville's lunch counters said that group of college students went on to become civil rights leaders across the South.“This nation owes a lot to Nashville and the students of Nashville,” Rip Patton, one of those student demonstrators, said during a Friday panel discussion. “They went all throughout the nation making people aware of the movement and what was going on.''
Fisk University student Diane Nash went on to help found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. John Lewis, a student at American Baptist Theological Seminary, now American Baptist College, was another founding member, a principal speaker at the 1963 March on Washington and a leader of the Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights marches. He is now a Georgia congressman.
