'Rest in Power': Nashville Civil Rights activist King Hollands dead at 82

Civil rights activist King Madison Hollands, a leader in the 1960s Nashville Student Movement to racially integrate the region, died Wednesday.

He was 82 years old. His cause of death and information about memorial services was not immediately released.

"Mr. King Hollands spent two weeks in jail for participating in the lunch counter sit-ins," Councilperson Zulfat Suara wrote on X. "Thank you sir for your part in desegregation. Rest in Power."

He first made a name for himself as one of the first 14 Black students to attend Father Ryan High School in 1954 after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling Brown v. Board of Education declared racial segregation in schools unconstitutional.

"I was pretty much the only Black in most of my classes," Hollands said, in a 2022 video produced by the Nashville mayor's office. "The Civil Rights Movement, which had a great impact in Nashville, has not been recognized as much here. I think that our history is very important. We have to understand the nature and power of racism."

While a student at Fisk University, he fought alongside Diane Nash, Bernard Lafayette, John Lewis and many others to fight racial segregation through sit-ins at local lunch counters. Their efforts led to desegregation across the city.

"My first sit-in was at Woolworth's," Hollands told The Tennessean in 2007. "We marched there in lines of two to Fifth Avenue's Arcade lunch counters in our best outfits. By the time we reached our protest spots, things got really hot. It was like walking into Titans stadium as the opposing team. The crowd was very hostile."

Hollands' early civil rights work paved the way for his continued investment in Nashville, campaign for improvements to the Edgehill neighborhood where he grew up and working to preserve African American history in Nashville.

"It certainly has helped me to not be reticent about stepping up to injustices and to not feel intimidated simply because there's great crowd movement on one side of an issue," Hollands told the Nashville Public Library in a 2006 interview. "It's helped me to really focus on what's important to me in life, and to not feel that I have to sit back and not be a participant. That I have to make a difference."

Hollands "had an incredible impact on a variety of barrier to justice facing Nashvillians over decades," the Metro Human Relations Commission posted on X, the site formerly known as Twitter.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Nashville Civil Rights 'icon' King Hollands dead at 82