By LUCAS L. JOHNSON II

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – On the same downtown block where Nashville police officers carried a young John Lewis by his hands and feet to a paddy wagon for daring to take a seat at a whites-only lunch counter decades ago, today’s fresh-faced police recruits are learning lessons about the fraught history between law enforcement and black Americans.

About 60 police hopefuls, many around the same age Lewis was when he emerged as a leader of the civil rights movement, gathered recently in the “Civil Rights Room” at Nashville’s main library. Dressed in plain blue uniforms, they listened to stories about Lewis and other college students who helped make Nashville the first Southern city to desegregate its lunch counters. Words Lewis uttered back then to urge his fellow students not to falter in the face of violence – “If not us, then who? If not now, then when?” – were inscribed on the wall above the recruits.

As confrontations between police and the black community once again trigger public outcry, law enforcement leaders around the country are looking for new ways to restore trust. In Tennessee, they have turned to the Nashville library’s rich archive on the movement to teach new recruits about past injustices, hoping the lessons of history will foster even-handed police work. The sessions with new recruits quickly became a core part of their training, and other law enforcement agencies around the country have taken notice.

“This interaction is going to put in the minds of everybody in that room, ‘When I approach someone or someone approaches me, I need to think about where they may be coming from,'” said Nashville police Chief Steve Anderson after speaking to recruits at a recent session.

For several years, the library’s Civil Rights Room, lined with pictures of Nashville during the movement, has become the setting for regular programs about the role leaders like Lewis, Diane Nash, Bernard Lafayette and James Lawson played in the push for equal treatment.

Some Nashville officers who visited the room while on a leadership tour were so impressed that they asked the library to develop a curriculum for new recruits, and later for veteran law enforcement officers, including members of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.