It is a relationship with two separate histories that rarely acknowledge each other. One version is the official account: Vanderbilt as a civic partner, economic engine, employer, research powerhouse, and community investor. The other is the actual historical record of a powerful private university whose proximity to Black Nashville and working-class neighborhoods has repeatedly produced displacement, conflict, and harm, while the university promoted an image of benevolent integration.
Both histories are true.
Founding and the Confederate South
Vanderbilt was chartered in 1872 and founded in 1875, named for Cornelius Vanderbilt, the New York shipping magnate who provided an initial $1 million endowment. The university’s founding came less than a decade after the Civil War, in a Nashville that was rebuilding under Union occupation and Reconstruction. Its stated purpose, according to historical accounts, included healing “the sectional wounds inflicted by the American Civil War.”
The university’s early character reflected the white upper-class Nashville establishment. Its connection to the Methodist Episcopal Church South kept it tethered to a denominational tradition that had, prior to the Civil War, defended slavery. In 1914 the university formally severed its Methodist ties in a legal dispute over control of the board, allowing it to seek national endowment money and become a secular research institution.
The James Lawson Expulsion: The Defining Moment
The clearest expression of Vanderbilt’s historical relationship with Nashville’s Black community came in 1960. James Lawson, a Vanderbilt Divinity student who had spent time in India studying Gandhi’s methods and been personally recruited to Nashville by Martin Luther King Jr., was running the nonviolent workshops that trained Diane Nash, John Lewis, and the rest of the Nashville sit-in movement.
When the Nashville sit-ins began on February 13, 1960, the Nashville Banner, whose editor James Stahlman sat on the Vanderbilt Board of Trust, attacked Lawson in an editorial as a “flannel-mouth agitator.” Under intense pressure from Stahlman and other trustees, Chancellor Harvie Branscomb expelled Lawson in March 1960. Twelve members of the divinity school faculty resigned in protest, and faculty in other departments circulated petitions.
Branscomb later said he regretted the decision and acknowledged he should have referred it to committee to delay action until Lawson’s graduation. The university did not formally apologize until 2006. In 2023, Nashville opened a public high school named after Lawson.
The Black undergraduates were not fully admitted to all of Vanderbilt’s schools until 1962. The first Black undergraduates entered in fall 1964.
The Interstate 40 Route Change: The Structural Harm
The second major episode in Vanderbilt’s relationship with its neighbors was the routing of Interstate 40 through North Nashville in the late 1960s. The original planned route ran closer to Vanderbilt’s campus, through predominantly white midtown territory. City officials changed the route. The highway was redirected through the heart of the Jefferson Street corridor, the center of Black Nashville’s cultural and commercial life.
The highway demolished approximately 650 homes, 27 apartment buildings, 128 businesses, and 16 blocks of Jefferson Street. Eighty percent of Black-owned businesses in the corridor were destroyed. The value of remaining housing dropped more than 30 percent.
Vanderbilt was not the only institution involved in this decision; the city, state, and federal governments all played roles. But accounts from the period document that Vanderbilt and Belmont University were among the institutions whose proximity to the originally planned route created pressure to redirect construction into a Black neighborhood where displacement would face less organized political resistance.
In the adjacent Edgehill neighborhood, Vanderbilt was accused during the urban renewal period of purchasing properties and allowing them to sit vacant, contributing to the blight designation that justified further clearance.
The Economic Impact: Size and Scope
The relationship is not simply one of harm. Vanderbilt is Nashville’s second-largest employer. In 2024, Vanderbilt University and Vanderbilt University Medical Center together reported a combined $22.13 billion economic impact on the Nashville region, generating approximately 120,000 jobs. This is not a negligible presence. The medical center is one of the major reasons Nashville became the healthcare industry capital of the United States.
Vanderbilt faculty research in public health, urban policy, and social science regularly produces work that influences Nashville’s governance. The Vanderbilt Political Review, Vanderbilt Business Review, and various academic departments have produced research on gentrification, housing affordability, and racial inequality in Nashville that has been used by city officials to inform policy.
The Current Relationship
Vanderbilt currently operates a Division of Government and Community Relations, maintains partnerships with Metro Nashville Public Schools, and has established a Center for Nashville Studies. The university runs programs in mentoring, tutoring, STEM outreach, and college readiness across the city’s public schools.
The tension that persists is structural. Vanderbilt is a highly selective university serving students who are predominantly wealthy and from outside Tennessee. Its presence drives up property values and rents in the neighborhoods surrounding its campus, including Edgehill and the neighborhoods along West End Avenue. Its student population demands amenities, including housing, restaurants, and retail, that alter neighborhood character and pricing.
The university’s official narrative emphasizes community partnership and service. The experience of longtime Nashville residents near Vanderbilt’s campus is often one of displacement. Both accounts are accurate. The question is which one receives more weight in how Vanderbilt describes its relationship to Nashville, and who gets to make that determination.
Sources
- Wikipedia: “Vanderbilt University.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VanderbiltUniversity
- Tennessee Encyclopedia: “Vanderbilt University.” https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/vanderbilt-university/
- New World Encyclopedia: “Vanderbilt University.” https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/VanderbiltUniversity
- Vanderbilt University: “Vanderbilt and Nashville: Good Neighbors.” https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2013/01/14/good-neighbors/
- Vanderbilt University: Government and Community Relations economic impact data. https://www.vanderbilt.edu/government-community-relations/
- Vanderbilt Political Review: “Nashville’s Affordable Housing Crisis.” https://vanderbiltpoliticalreview.com/5522/local/nashvilles-affordable-housing-crisis/
- The Tennessee Tribune: “The Makers of Music City, Jefferson Street.” https://tntribune.com/the-makers-of-music-city-jefferson-street/
- Edgehill study: Coroflot PDF, “Edgehill’s Vanishing Edges: A Study of Urban Renewal and Gentrification.” https://s3images.coroflot.com/userfiles/individualfiles/originalpdf8807918cshvewdz2ukofib5nktspft.pdf
- Stand Up Nashville: “Part 2: Housing discrimination: How’d we get here?” https://standupnashville.org/part-1-housing-discrimination-howd-we-get-here/
- Be a Helping Hand: “Why I Came to Focus on North Nashville for Affordable Housing.” https://bahelpinghand.org/our-story/
- Vanderbilt Project on Unity and American Democracy: “Learning from the Nashville model of social change.” https://www.vanderbilt.edu/unity/2021/04/06/learning-from-the-nashville-model-of-social-change/