Could Nashville arrest and charge the arsonists?
Would Nashville citizens actually be held accountable for blowing up an elementary school in their own city?
Weeks before the first day of school, Ku Klux Klan Member John Kasper traveled to Nashville as part of his violent resistance to school desegregation. He had already been to other Southern cities agitating local citizens against integration. When he arrived in Nashville in August, he was appealing his guilty conviction for inciting a riot in Clinton, Tennessee.
Principle Margaret Cate testified that John Kasper came to school registration on August 27 enquiring, quote “whether Negroes were enrolled…” She said no, which was true, because Patricia Watson would not register until days later.
The night of the first day of school, Kasper held a rally at the State Capital, warning an angry mob to prepare for bloodshed if schools continued desegregating.
Several hours later, after midnight, the bomb went off at Hattie Cotton Elementary. John Kasper would eventually be convicted of inciting a riot and was fined and served six months in jail. No one was charged with arson or the actual bombing.
As decades passed, white memory would insist that the bomber was just an outside agitator. A lone wolf acting on his own, and that Nashville citizens would never help or participate in such a violent act.