Cain-Sloan Co. Inc. was a department store chain based in

Nashville, Tennessee Nashville is the capital city of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the seat of Davidson County. With a population of 689,447 at the 2020 U.S. census, Nashville is the most populous city in the state, 21st most-populous city in the U.S., and ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

. It was founded in 1903, merged with

Allied Stores Allied Stores was a department store chain in the United States. It was founded in the 1930s as part of a general consolidation in the retail sector by B. E. Puckett. See also Associated Dry Goods. It was the successor to Hahn's Department Stor ...

in 1955, and with Dillard's in 1987. It was a target of the 1960

Nashville sit-ins The Nashville sit-ins, which lasted from February 13 to May 10, 1960, were part of a protest to end racial segregation at lunch counters in downtown Nashville, Tennessee. The sit-in campaign, coordinated by the Nashville Student Movement and th ...

History

The store was co-founded by Paul Lowe Sloan, Pat Cain and John E. Cain in Nashville in 1903. The company merged with

Corp. of New York in 1955 and remained under its umbrella before being sold to, and renamed, Dillard's in 1987-1988. The chain had four locations: Downtown Nashville,

Hickory Hollow Mall Global Mall at the Crossings (formerly Hickory Hollow Mall) was a 1.1 million-square-foot (102,193-square-meter) regional indoor shopping mall in the Nashville neighborhood of Antioch, Tennessee, located just east of I-24 at exit 59 along ...

Rivergate Mall Rivergate Mall is a super-regional Shopping mall, shopping mall located in Goodlettsville, Tennessee, United States, just outside of Nashville, Tennessee, Nashville, the List of capitals in the United States, state capital of Tennessee. Opened in ...

, and The Mall at Green Hills.

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 The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the Unite ...

. On December 5, 1959, future Congressman

John Lewis John Robert Lewis (February 21, 1940 – July 17, 2020) was an American politician and civil rights activist who served in the United States House of Representatives for from 1987 until his death in 2020. He participated in the 1960 Nashville ...

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. After the march on Nashville's courthouse in April 1960 and the admission by Mayor

Ben West Raphael Benjamin West (March 31, 1911 – November 20, 1974) was an American attorney and politician who served as mayor of Nashville from 1951 to 1963, and as a Tennessee state senator from 1949 to 1951. While a state senator, he supported a ...

that lunch counters "ought to be desegregated", Cain-Sloan and other downtown Nashville stores quietly opened their counters to all races as of May 10, 1960.

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. 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 by building two new stores ( Bellevue Center and

Cool Springs Galleria CoolSprings Galleria is an enclosed super-regional shopping mall in the Cool Springs commercial and residential corridor between Franklin and Brentwood, Tennessee, south of Nashville. Opened in 1991, it features 150 stores. The anchor stores ar ...

) and acquiring three former

Castner Knott Castner Knott was a Nashville, Tennessee-based regional department store chain which operated stores in Alabama, Kentucky, and Tennessee. The chain was in business for a century from 1898 to 1998, in its later years as a division of Mercantile Stor ...

stores (Donelson Plaza,

Harding Mall Harding Mall was a shopping mall located in suburban Nashville, Tennessee, United States. It was southeast of downtown at the corner of Nolensville Pike US 31A/ US 41A and Harding Place ( SR 255) in the Paragon Mills neighborhood. Built in 1966, ...

, and Murfreesboro's

Stones River Mall Stones River Town Centre (formerly Stones River Mall) is a partially enclosed regional shopping mall in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, United States. Built in 1992, it was expanded and renovated in the late 2000s. The mall comprises more than fifty store ...

). Dillard's has since rebuilt the Stones River location and closed the Harding Mall, Donelson Plaza, Bellevue Center and Hickory Hollow Mall locations. Hickory Hollow was the first of the converted Cain-Sloan locations to close, though it left its original building in 1991.

References

{{Dillard's history Companies based in Nashville, Tennessee Defunct department stores based in Tennessee Retail companies disestablished in 1987 Defunct companies based in Tennessee 1903 establishments in Tennessee Retail companies established in 1903 1987 disestablishments in Tennessee