Nashville Public Library Foundation Board Chair Don Holmes Reflects on Family’s Voting

Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Alice Walker. Gloria Steinem. Shirley Chisholm. Their stories — and dozens of others — are told & in Nashville Public Library’s (NPL)& Votes for Women Room. Meanwhile, some unsung heroes exist even closer to home. That’s definitely the case with Don Holmes — outgoing Chair of the Nashville Public Library Foundation (NPLF) Board — whose devotion to voting was instilled by two women who helped raise him. Radical Changes and Daily News In the 1950s and ‘60s, The Civil Rights Movement — spearheaded by giants like Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, and Rosa Parks — was gaining traction across the nation. For Holmes and his family, this evolution was a backdrop for a much more immediate, personal concern: the need to survive. “We grew up in a house together where, at any given time, there could be eighteen to twenty-three people living in that house,” Holmes said. “This was the pre-Civil Rights Act era. Black individuals were very supportive of each other. They had to be to survive.” Cost-cutting measures were essential. The family spent the majority of summer days outside so the electricity could be shut off, and prepared meals with kerosene heaters instead of...