Fred Whitley is an intelligent, bright light whose leaving his fingerprint throughout Nashville with his sightseeing tour company, Soul of America Tours. A native Nashvillian, Fred has watched the city grow into the hottest tourist destination in the country. As an educator for 30 years, he decided to get in on this boom by taking his love and knowledge of history to create a tour company centered around sharing the history (and herstory) and contributions of African Americans in Nashville. well-known and unknown history in Nashville. A city rich in monumental moments from the civil rights sit-ins, creation and development of the first African American medical school in the South, to seeing some of the greatest artists and musicians create their hits in Nashville.
Talking to Fred was an absolute joy, so keep reading to check out why he has one of the coolest sightseeing tours in the city.
Fred, what was the spark for Soul of America Tours?
I think it was a confluence of a couple of things. I was teaching people, and then I was working. I was the security supervisor at the Country Music Hall of Fame Museum. I would notice all of these tour buses going by, but realized nobody was telling our story. So I had that in the back of my mind while I was teaching at the Johnson Learning Center, which is an alternative school that sits on the former Tom Wilson Park, an 8,000-seat Negro League Baseball Arena in the 1920s. I remember being in the classroom, and some kids were joking on each other using the projects like JC Napier and Preston Taylor, as a weapon. I was like, hold on, do you know who those men were? They helped to build community in our city and created our Black History. I realized that my generation did not do a great job of educating the next generation on our prominent history and contributions in this city…