By J. Holly McCall
NASHVILLE, TN — King Madison Hollands, a member of the Nashville Student Movement, which challenged racial segregation in Nashville in the 1960s, died Wednesday, December 20, 2023 at the age of 82 in Nashville.
The cause of death was not immediately known.
A Nashville native, Hollands was in the first class of 14 Black students to integrate the all-male Father Ryan High School after the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling Brown v. Board of Education.
In a 2006 interview with the Nashville Public Library, Hollands reflected on his time at Father Ryan.
‘”People said, ‘why the Catholics? Well, the Catholics were second class citizens as well. This is the south,” Hollands said. “Was there a lot of furor? No. Because it didn’t threaten anyone.”
In 1960, while studying physics at Fisk University, Hollands was arrested for participating in a lunch counter sit-in at a Woolworth’s store — during which students were spit on and physically assaulted — on what is now Rep. John Lewis Way in downtown Nashville.
“Only students who had gone through training could participate,” he told the Lookout’s Anita Wadhwani in 2021. “Those who didn’t — or felt like they couldn’t not react, also had a role. They stood outside. They observed.”
He spent two weeks in jail following his arrest, but was not deterred from continuing his activism, and continued to be a community leader through his life.
