In 1912, Nashville’s downtown businessmen sold a special edition of The Nashville Tennessean one Christmas Eve. Calling themselves the Big Brothers, these caring city leaders filled peach baskets with groceries and delivered them to the shanty towns that lined the Railroad Gulch and the Cumberland River.
Nashville is no longer gripped by the extreme poverty of those early years, when Big Brother Elmer Bryant reported delivering food to people “so hungry they were gnawing on bones”.
But in Music City today, many of our neighbors struggle to meet their most basic needs. And as the cost of housing rises rapidly, Nashville natives can no longer afford to live in the neighborhoods where they grew up. Working people are pushed into public housing because it is all that they can afford. Waiting lists for affordable housing grow long for our poorest neighbors, leaving families homeless, living in motels or doubled up in small apartments.
Undaunted
by
snow,
ice,
wind
and
the
worst
snowstorm
in
December
history,
an
army
of
Big
Brothers
volunteers
fanned
out
over
the
city
to
deliver
the
substance
of
Christmas
to
nearly
3,000
underprivileged
families
on
Dec.
23,
1963.
A
total
of
2,600
of
the
food-laden
baskets
were
delivered
from
the
distribution
point
here
at
the
Fairgrounds
Coliseum.
The
other
400
baskets
were
already
delivered
Dec.
22nd.
Eldred
Reaney
/
The
Tennessean
A Tradition of Service
In 1912, Nashville’s downtown businessmen sold a special edition of The Nashville Tennessean one Christmas Eve. Calling themselves the Big Brothers, these caring city leaders filled peach baskets with groceries and delivered them to the shanty towns that lined the Railroad Gulch and the Cumberland River.