Harry C. Howard, Jr., Lecture
The Harry C. Howard, Jr.., Lecture Series was established in 1994 through the endowment of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas E. Nash, Jr., and Mr. and Mrs. George D. Renfro, all of Asheville, North Carolina. The lecture honors Harry C. Howard, Jr., who earned his bachelor’s degree Vanderbilt in 1951, and allows the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities to bring an outstanding scholar to Vanderbilt annually to deliver a lecture on a significant topic in the humanities.
In coordination with RPW’s annual theme, “The Place of Memory,” Professors Amie Thurber (Portland State University) and Learotha Williams, Jr., (Tennessee State University) discussed their book I’ll Take You There: Exploring Nashville’s Social Justice Sites at the 2023-2024 Harry C. Howard, Jr., Lecture on March 1, 2024 at Heard Libraries.
Before there were guidebooks, there were just guides—people in the community you could count on to show you around.
I’ll Take You There is written by and with the people who know Nashville most intimately, foregrounding the struggles and achievements of people’s movements toward social justice. The colloquial use of “I’ll take you there” has long been a response to the call of a stranger: for recommendations of safe passage through unfamiliar territory, a decent meal and place to lay one’s head, or perhaps a watering hole or juke joint.
In this Thurber and Williams’s work, more than one hundred Nashvillians “take us there,” guiding us to places we might not otherwise encounter. Their entries bear witness to the ways that power has been used by social, political, and economic elites to tell or omit certain stories, while celebrating the power of counternarratives as a tool to resist injustice. Each entry is simultaneously a story about place, power, and the historic and ongoing struggle toward a more just city for all. The result is akin to the experience of asking for directions in an unfamiliar place and receiving a warm offer from a local to lead you on, accompanied by a tale or two.