In Chap­ter Two, titled “Nashville,” John Lewis recounts his arrival in Nashville on Sep­tem­ber 8, 1957, where he begins his stud­ies at the Amer­i­can Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary. At sev­en­teen, Lewis is away from home for the first time, car­ry­ing with him a trunk gift­ed by his uncle. The sem­i­nary, sit­u­at­ed on a pic­turesque cam­pus by the Cum­ber­land Riv­er, has been prepar­ing African Amer­i­cans for min­istry since 1924, despite its found­ing being influ­enced by a desire to keep Black Bap­tists from attend­ing white insti­tu­tions.

As Lewis set­tles into Grig­gs Hall, he expe­ri­ences a new­found inde­pen­dence with a room to him­self for the first time. He begins work­ing in the din­ing hall to fund his stud­ies, which intro­duces him to the diverse array of stu­dents aim­ing to become min­is­ters. Despite his aca­d­e­m­ic com­mit­ment, ret­i­cence and a speech imped­i­ment often leave him feel­ing out of place. Yet, he finds solace in aca­d­e­mics, engag­ing deeply with sub­jects like phi­los­o­phy and his­to­ry under the guid­ance of influ­en­tial pro­fes­sors.

A piv­otal influ­ence dur­ing his time in Nashville is Kel­ly Miller Smith, a civ­il rights leader and min­is­ter who inspires Lewis with his dynam­ic preach­ing. Often fac­ing a divide among the fac­ul­ty and students—those focus­ing sole­ly on min­istry ver­sus those advo­cat­ing for social change—Lewis sides with the lat­ter, ignit­ing his inter­est in civ­il rights issues. His aware­ness of these chal­lenges is height­ened by the inte­gra­tion bat­tles occur­ring in oth­er South­ern regions.

Attend­ing meet­ings with the NAACP intro­duces Lewis to Nashville’s vibrant civ­il rights com­mu­ni­ty, where he meets promi­nent fig­ures and learns about activist phi­los­o­phy, par­tic­u­lar­ly non­vi­o­lence as advo­cat­ed by Gand­hi. His con­nec­tions deep­en through friend­ships with fel­low stu­dents, par­tic­u­lar­ly with Harold Cox, who guides him through this new land­scape. Despite ini­tial friend­ships with more care­free stu­dents, Lewis remains com­mit­ted to social jus­tice work, encour­aged by lead­ers like Smith and the urgency of the times.

As the 1959 semes­ter begins, Lewis, moti­vat­ed by the need for change, becomes more involved in social activism, ulti­mate­ly lead­ing to the plan­ning of sit-ins to deseg­re­gate Nashville’s lunch coun­ters. Inspired by the pos­si­bil­i­ty of prac­tic­ing non­vi­o­lent resis­tance, Lewis’s expe­ri­ence in this chap­ter sets the stage for his future role as a promi­nent fig­ure in the civ­il rights move­ment, reveal­ing both per­son­al growth and a bur­geon­ing sense of pur­pose .