The Metro Human Relations Commission (MHRC) is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year. Interestingly enough, 2025 is also the year that the state legislature dismantled the independent Tennessee Human Rights Commission and moved it under the Attorney General’s Office.
Human relations commissions were born out of the Civil Rights Movement and started popping up after the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But there were some created even earlier. Philadelphia claims to have established the first human relations commission in the United States in 1952. And LA County’s human relations commission touts on its website that its legacy dates back to 1944 with the creation of the Committee for Interracial Progress.
MHRC was founded in 1965, and its mission is “to protect and promote the personal dignity of all people by protecting and promoting their safety, health, security, peace, and general welfare.”
The tasks of a human relations commission can be at times controversial within a government, as they often function to point out weaknesses and protect individuals against discrimination from the very government that the commissions are part of.
Looking at the recent budget allocations, the current administration under Mayor Freddie O’Connell seems to support the work of MHRC, as evidenced by an 86-percent budget increase over the past two years (from $765,800 in FY23/24 to $1.4 million for FY25/26).
But seeing such support from a mayoral administration has not always been the case.
“In MHRC’s 60-year history here in Nashville, it has been defunded before,” said the Rev. Davie Tucker who heads the department. That defunding took place between the years of 1990 to 1995, until Mayor Phil Bredesen reinstated a budget and thus, revived the MHRC with Anthea Boarman as the executive director.
The work of MHRC can be varied with reports focused on equity; awareness campaigns; and investigations of crimes, hate group activity and other discriminatory practices in Nashville Davidson County – to name a few of their tasks.
In our Q&A with Rev. Tucker you will see that he said there are more losses for his department than wins. One of the big wins was achieved last year when MHRC functioned as a mediary that led the effort to create a successful remediation plan for the Arts Commission after the latter.
As a matter of fact, MHRC staff Ashley Bachelder did such a stellar job in analyzing a situation where a Metro department mishandled community grant funds intended for underserved artists, that she was named the interim director of Metro Arts to help them untangle and clean up their administrative mess.
One of the outreach efforts MHRC is testing in 2025, on its 60th anniversary, is called No Hate On My Plate. The goal is to hold communal meals across the city on a monthly basis and create a safe space where Nashvillians are able, “to discuss experiences and observations regarding the environments and places where hateful and discriminatory behavior has occurred or is occurring.”
Designated moderators will report back to MHRC with the ultimate goal for the department to inform elected officials, community leaders, nonprofit organizations, and neighborhoods about experiences and perceptions discussed at the No Hate On My Plate meals.
In a nation where freedom of speech has been trumped by intimidation at the national, state, and local government levels, it is imperative that we create spaces like these where people still can feel safe to participate in community building.
No Hate On My Plate is part of MHRC’s Humans Over Hate initiative, which is based on four tenets (copied and pasted from the MHRC website):
- Respect: Creating safe and respectful spaces – whether they be virtual, in-person, or hybrid – for interactions between diverse and/or disparate groups.
- Connect: Hosting engagements designed to gauge the experiences and observations of our neighbors while fostering genuine dialogue leading to better understanding and relationships.
- Detect: Developing new as well as leveraging existing infrastructure and tools to understand what the prevalence of hate in the community is as well as how and/or where it’s manifesting.
- Affect: Coalescing and providing infrastructure to partner organizations, neighborhoods, and community members to deploy thoughtful interventions to hateful environments when needed.
MHRC has posted several interesting reports on its website that warrant attention. One of them is the third version of its IncluCivics Report from 2023, which examines the diversity of Metro’s workforce, examining 51 departments and close to 10,000 employees. The report examined the changes in Metro employees over the prior eight years.
In the takeaway, MHRC found, “increases in the number of some gender and racial minorities over time and general increased salaries for all, [with] stark differences that show gender and racial pay inequities.”
The IncluCivics Report showed that while the Hispanic and Latinx population is the fastest growing demographic in the city, that population’s representation among Metro employees is not increasing at equal rates.
Furthermore, the report recommended that Metro examine what categories it offers when determining gender and also race in its collection of employee demographics. And finally — and may I add — unsurprisingly, a higher percentage of Metro employees is living out of county in 2023 than in 2015.
Maintaining the independence of a body like the MHRC is critical and having strong leaders in place who do not shy away from holding fellow government departments accountable when it comes to protecting and promoting the dignity of all people is even more crucial.
That’s why I am encouraged when I see more Metro funding allocated to MHRC that allows for more staffing and projects to be tackled.
Tennessee, however, took another route. The state legislature dissolved the Tennessee Human Rights Commission, which had served as an independent body within government. The Tennessee Human Rights Commission was actually created in 1963, two years prior to the establishment of the MHRC. Its initial purpose was “to encourage, promote and advise the public of their human rights,” according to the now defunct webpage.
As of July 1, 2025, the responsibility to enforce the Tennessee Human Rights Act was shifted to the Office of Attorney General’s Civil Rights Enforcement Division. In other words, a commission that was set up similarly to the MHRC and investigated discrimination independently from other government departments, is now overseen by Tennessee’s chief law enforcement officer and lawyer for the state.
We all know that attorney general offices in any state are usually highly political. This is no different in Tennessee, even though the attorney general here is appointed by the Tennessee Supreme Court (not the governor). However, justices on the state supreme court are appointed by the governor with the help of a nominating committee.
The bottom line is that in a red state like Tennessee, which has been used for years as a testing ground for federal policies aimed to bombard people’s rights and dismantle diversity, equity, and inclusion, it is a red flag to dismantle the Human Rights Commission.
Let me be clear: shutting down the independence of the Tennessee Human Rights Commission does not mean that you can’t file a complaint. The state still complies with federal and state laws, and in particular with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that prohibits discrimination based on race, color and national origin by state agencies that receive federal funding.
The two state laws that are upheld are the Tennessee Human Rights Act and the Tennessee Disability Act, which prohibit discrimination in housing, employment, and public accommodation on the basis of race, color, creed, national origin, religion, sex, disability, familial status (which applied to housing only), and age (which refers to employment discrimination of people over 40).
Both the state and Metro make it fairly easy through their Website to file an online complaint and guide you through the process via a questionnaire.
I feel comforted in the fact that as of yet, we still have local human relations commissions like the MHRC which, while still woefully underfunded, may be one of the options to offer some safe space for you to voice your grievances. Let’s protect them.