pay the tax (as they did in Knoxville), or conversely by making payment as difficult as possible. Such manipulation of the tax, and therefore the vote, created an opportunity for the rise of urban bosses and political machines. Urban politicians bought large blocks of poll tax receipts and distributed them to blacks and whites, who then voted as instructed." Abuses of the poll tax continued to resist efforts by reformers for change in the 1930s and 1940s. In 1943 legislators managed to rescind the poll tax, but the Tennessee Supreme Court declared that action unconstitutional. It was not until 1953 that a new constitutional convention finally removed provisions for the poll tax. Hundreds of thousands of citizens, both black and white, had been disenfranchised by its abuses during the decades since its passage. Civil Rights Movement Tennessee played an important and prominent role during the Civil Rights Movement. Many national civil rights leaders, such as Martin Luther King Jr., received training in methods of nonviolent protest at the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee. The same nonviolent methods which Mahatma Gandhi had used were taught here. In the spring of 1960, after decades of segregation, Tennessee's Jim Crow laws were challenged by an organized group of Nashville college students from Fisk University, American Baptist Theological Seminary, and Vanderbilt University. The students, led by Jim Farmer, John Lewis, and ministers of local African-American churches, used methods of non-violent protest in anticipation of a planned and concerted effort to desegregate Nashville's downtown lunch counters through a series of sit-ins. Although many were harassed and beaten by vigilantes and arrested by the Nashville police, none of the students retaliated with violence. The Nashville sit-ins reached a turning point when the house of Z. Alexander Looby, a prominent African-American attorney and leader, was bombed. Although no one was killed, thousands of protesters spontaneously marched to Nashville City Hall to confront Mayor Ben West. Meeting the mass of protesters outside city hall, West informally debated with them and concluded by conceding that segregation was immoral. The bombing, the march, and Mayor West's statement helped convince downtown lunch counters to desegregate. Although segregation and Jim Crow were by no means over, the episode served as one of the first successful events of mostly nonviolent protest. The community leadership and activism of African Americans in the Civil Rights Movement across the South gained passage of the national