- Cain-Sloan
Cain-Sloan Co. Inc. was a four-unit department store chain based in
Nashville, Tennessee ,United States . Paul Lowe Sloan, Pat Cain and John E. Cain founded Cain-Sloan in Nashville in 1903. The company merged withAllied Stores Corp. of New York in 1955 and remained under its umbrella before being sold to, and renamed,Dillard's in 1987.Former Locations
*Antioch -
Hickory Hollow Mall
*Goodlettsville -Rivergate Mall
*Nashville - Downtown (Church @ Fifth)
*Nashville -The Mall at Green Hills Conversion to Dillard's
In 1987, shortly before Allied Stores merged with Campeau Corporation [Knight Stivender, "Elizabeth Sloan Bainum, 87, dies; Services Tuesday." "The Tennessean", October 31, 1999.)] , the four Cain-Sloan stores were sold to Dillard's in a separate deal. Dillard's entered Nashville as it took over operations of the three mall stores, but closed the downtown store instead of converting it, the first blow to the fledgling Church Street Center mall, which had built a connector to Cain-Sloan. In 1991, Dillard's replaced the former Cain-Sloan with a new building at Hickory Hollow Mall as part of a mall expansion.
Since then, Dillard's has expanded in the Nashville market to include two new stores (
Bellevue Center andCool Springs Galleria ) and the conversion of three formerCastner Knott stores (Donelson Plaza,Harding Mall , and Murfreesboro'sStones River Mall ). Dillard's has since rebuilt the Stones River location and closed the Harding Mall, Donelson Plaza and Bellevue Center locations, with the Hickory Hollow Mall location to follow in August 2008. It will be the first of the converted Cain-Sloan locations to close, though it left the original building in 1991.Civil Rights movement
Cain-Sloan was a target of one of the earliest sit-in protests by young African-Americans in Nashville during the
Civil Rights Movement . On December 5, 1959, future Congressman John Lewis led a group of college students who entered the store intending to sit at its lunch counter. They were politely asked to leave, and they did so. [John Lewis, "Walking with the Wind", pp. 88-89; ISBN 0156007088] After the march of 19 April 1960 on Nashville's courthouse and the admission by Mayor Ben West that lunch counters "ought to be desegregated" [ [http://www.newschannel5.com/Global/story.asp?S=6054020 NewsChannel 5.com - Nashville, Tennessee - Nashville Sit-ins ] ] , Cain-Sloan and other downtown Nashville stores quietly opened their counters to all races as of May 10, 1960.References
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