At the peak of Fort Negley, the historical plaques are so sun-bleached they’ve become unreadable, obscuring the story they’re meant to tell about one of Nashville’s most important sites.
It’s here that a group of college students recently gathered for a nontraditional final exam. Instead of blue books or essays, Tennessee State University’s Dr. Learotha Williams has them out for a meandering “walk-and-talk.”
This class is “Black Nashville in History and Memory.” It comes to life along the winding trail as Williams asks the students about the Black laborers who constructed the fort. He gestures toward the Nashville skyline of high rises, asking them to imagine how it once looked…