Looby moved to
Nashville, Tennessee, where he started as an assistant professor at
Fisk University, a
historically black college. As a young state senator in Nashville's fifth ward,
Ben West pushed for a charter reform in 1950 to allow local residents to elect city council members from
single-member districts rather than through
at-large voting. The latter system favored the white majority in the city and made it difficult for the sizeable African-American minority ever to elect candidates of their choice. With the change, African Americans began to elect some candidates. At that time, many black voters were still
disenfranchised since the state had passed laws in the late 1880s to charge
poll taxes and make voter registration and voting difficult. After the change to the charter, in May 1951 Looby was elected to the Nashville City Council, along with another lawyer, Robert Lillard. The house was nearly destroyed by the powerful bomb, which also blew out 140 windows at nearby
Meharry Medical College, resulting in minor injuries to students. Neither Looby nor his wife, Grafta Mosby Looby, was harmed in the bombing. Diane Nash asked him, "Do you feel it is wrong to discriminate against a person solely on the basis of their race or color?" West said "yes," later explaining, "It was a moral question – one that a man had to answer, not a politician." By May of that year, lunch counters in Nashville were desegregated. By October, Looby and his team gained dismissal of the charges against 91 students "for conspiracy to disrupt trade and commerce." ==Death and legacy==