Settlement in Nashville

After three months of sit-ins marked by a near-riot, mass arrests and the dynamiting of a Negro city councilman's home, urbane Nashville last week asserted its moderate nature by becoming the South's first city to yield to Negro demands for lunch-counter equality. Opened to Negroes after secret, month-long negotiations between businessmen and Negro leaders were lunch counters in half a dozen variety and department stores.

Bargaining was spurred by an effective Negro boycott and a sharp decline in white patronage following a melee downtown last month in which a Negro youth was badly beaten by white toughs. "Fear of violence was killing us," confessed a merchant. "We realized that if that sort of thing happened again, we were going to be ruined." Under a phased-integration plan, Negroes sought service singly and in small groups during slack hours last week, promised to stay away when rural whites flock to town on Saturdays.

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