Among Nashville's many slogans, the one that best reflects its emphasis on manners and decorum is the Nashville Way, a phrase coined by boosters to tout what they viewed as the city's amicable race relations. Benjamin Houston offers the first scholarly book on the history of civil rights in Nashville, providing new insights and critiques of this moderate progressivism for which the city has long been credited.

BENJAMIN HOUSTON is a lecturer at Newcastle University in the United Kingdom. He is the former director of the Remembering African American Pittsburgh oral history project at the Center for African American Urban Studies and the Economy at Carnegie Mellon University.