Nashville Metro: The Politics of City-County Consolidation

As Nashville's governance is under increasing scrutiny by the Tennessee General Assembly, many Nashvillians are struggling to understand what our metropolitan form of government is and why we chose to reorganize our city this way in 1963. Nashville Metro was first published in the aftermath of that decision, and it provides a comprehensive record of what the city understood itself to be doing at the time. How did it happen? When so many less thoroughgoing reforms had failed elsewhere, how could Nashville accomplish a complete city-county consolidation? Why in Nashville did the voters outside the central city support consolidation, when in area after area it is these voters who defeat reform proposals? Why did the consolidation fail in 1958 and succeed in 1962? Nashville Metro was written to answer such questions. One great benefit to Hawkins' approach is how he lays out what was conventional wisdom at the time and what was reported in the local papers and balances it against what participants told him directly.

This is a valuable artifact in itself, but the new foreword by former Nashville mayor, current Judge, David Briley, grandson of the first metro Nashville mayor, Beverly Briley, offers a first-hand account of the realities of metropolitan government sixty years on.