TARGET ACQUIRED

EARLY ON A FRIDAY EVENING in Nashville, I stand in the bullseye of history on the corner of 5th Avenue and Church Street. Two blocks south stands the Ryman Auditorium, once home of the Grand Ole Opry. A short distance north, 124 black civil rights protesters were refused service in 1960 during a sit-in at the lunch counter of F.W. Woolworth’s five-and-dime store.

A block to the east, pioneers struggled against attacking Indians in 1781 during the Battle of the Bluffs. And to the northwest, around the block and past the city park, Ulysses S. Grant made his 1864 headquarters in the home of a Confederate sympathizer.

But, oh, what mostly forgotten Civil War history occurred merely steps from where I stand.

of the Maxwell House Hotel is a black-and-white painted historical marker