Tennessee: Naked Discrimination

In Tennessee, which has had little racial trouble, the most ambitious civil rights case in years got under way last week. The plaintiffs, for a change, were not Negroes. They were nudists.

At issue before a three-judge federal court in Knoxville was a suit by the Tennessee Outdoor Club, which last year received a state charter to found a nudist colony. In the charter's words, the coeducational camp was for the sole purpose of "social, sun, air and water therapy . . . without the confinement of clothing." But before the project could take off, local residents persuaded the Tennessee...