From the Reconstruction era through the 1960s, Jefferson Street, just ahead of you, was the main commercial artery of Nashville's African-American community and the heart of one of the most important Black music scenes in the American South. Before integration and before the interstate highway divided the community, Jefferson Street was a thriving commercial and entertainment corridor. The clubs and venues along this stretch hosted Jimi Hendrix — who played Jefferson Street clubs as a young musician before his career took off — as well as Etta James, Little Richard, and virtually every major Black touring act of the 1950s and early 1960s on the Chitlin' Circuit, the informal network of Black-owned venues that provided stages during the segregation era.
Nashville's soul and R&B scene was nationally significant, and its musicians fed the studios of Music Row as session players and backing vocalists. The construction of Interstate 40 through this corridor in the late 1960s was a deliberate act of urban disruption that destroyed hundreds of Black-owned businesses and residences and severed Jefferson Street's connection to Fisk University and Meharry. Community organizations have been working for decades to restore some of what was lost.
The corridor is recovering, slowly.