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XXPANTHAXX
Sit-Ins: A History of Student Struggle
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"All of Africa will be free before we can get a lousy cup of
coffee."
-- James Baldwin
On February 1, 1960, Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, David
Richmond, and Ezell Blair, Jr., walked into an F.W. Woolworth
Company store in Greensboro, North Carolina, purchased some
school supplies, then went to the lunch counter and asked to
be served. They knew they probably would not be. The four
freshmen at the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical
College were black, and this lunch counter was segregated.
Still, as one of the students told UPI, "We believe, since we
buy books and papers in the other part of the store, we
should get served in this part." When they were forced to
leave as the store closed, they still had not been served.
This first sit-in had very little effect. C.L. Harris,
manager of the store, said of the students, "They can just
sit there. It's nothing to me." But when a larger group of
students returned the next day, wire services picked up the
story, and civil rights organizations began to spread the
word to other college campuses. Gordon Carey, a
representative from the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE),
came down from New York to organize more sit-ins. Ella Baker
of the SCLC contacted students on many college campuses. In
two weeks, students in eleven cities held sit-ins, primarily
at Woolworth's and S.H. Kress stores. Soon stores put signs
in the window, saying "NO TRESPASSING," "We Reserve the Right
to Service the Public As We See Fit," and "CLOSED - In the
Interest of Public Safety."
The basic plan of the sit-ins was that a group of students
would go to a lunch counter and ask to be served. If they
were, they'd move on to the next lunch counter. If they were
not, they would not move until they had been. If they were
arrested, a new group would take their place. The students
always remained nonviolent and respectful. Students in
Nashville had some "Do's" and "Don'ts" during sit-ins:
Do show yourself friendly on the counter at all times. Do sit
straight and always face the counter. Don't strike back, or
curse back if attacked. Don't laugh out. Don't hold
conversations. Don't block entrances.
Another part of the sit-ins was that the students would be
dressed up in their best Sunday clothing. James J.
Kilpatrick, the editor of the Richmond News Leader and an
vehement segregationist, noted that this created an
interesting contrast with the whites who came to harass them:
Here were the colored students, in coats, white shirts, ties,
and one of them was reading Goethe and one was taking notes
from a biology text. [The students often brought schoolbooks
with them to sit-ins so they could study.] And here, on the
sidewalk outside was a gang of white boys come to heckle, a
ragtail rabble, slack-jawed, black-jacketed, grinning fit to
kill, and some of them, God save the mark, were waving the
proud and honored flag of the Southern States in the last war
fought by gentlemen. Eheu! It gives one pause.
When Northern students heard of the movement, they decided to
help their Southern counterparts by picketing local branches
of chain stores that were segregated in the South. Martin
Smolin, a Columbia student who led picketing at Woolworth's,
explained, "People have asked me why northerners, especially
white people, who have been in the majority in our picketing
demonstrations in New York, take an active part in an issue
which doesn't concern them. My answer is that injustice
anywhere is everybody's concern." And when a reporter asked
Congressman Adam Clayton Powell of Harlem if he was
advocating that Negroes in New York stay out of national
chain stores such as Woolworth's, he answered, "Oh no. I'm
advocating that American citizens interested in democracy
stay out of these stores."
The first few weeks of sit-ins were fairly quiet. Blacks were
not served, but they were not harassed much either. Then, on
February 27, sit-in students in Nashville were attacked by a
group of white teenagers. Police arrived, but they let the
white teens go while arresting the protesters for "disorderly
conduct." As each group of protesters was arrested, a new
group would take its place. "No matter what they did and how
many they arrested, there was still a lunch counter full of
students there," explained Diane Nash, one of the leaders of
the sit-in movement in Nashville. Z. Alexander Looby, a
prominent black lawyer, represented the protesters in court;
however, as he began his arguments, the judge literally
turned his back. Looby stopped his argument and said, to the
judge's back, "What's the use!" The judge found the
defendants guilty, and they were fined $150 plus court costs.
A few days later, 63 protesters were arrested during sit-ins
at Nashville's Greyhound and Trailways bus terminals.
Over Easter Weekend, Ella Baker of the SCLC helped organize a
conference of sit-in students from around the nation. Held at
Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, the conference
was dubbed the "Sacrifice for Dignity." Older organizations
such as SCLC, CORE, and NAACP hoped that the students would
create a youth organization inside of them. Baker, however,
encouraged the students to form an independent organization.
They formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
(SNCC, pronounced "snick") to lead the sit-in effort.
On April 19, Z. Alexander Looby's home was destroyed by a
powerful dynamite blast. Looby was considered to be fairly
conservative, so the bombing enraged not only the black
community but many whites as well. 2,500 students and
community members staged a silent march to City Hall that
day. When they reached it, Mayor Ben West was waiting for
them. 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. He later explained, "It was a
moral question -- one that a man had to answer, not a
politician." Nashville merchants were somewhat relieved by
West's answer. "The merchants were afraid to move on their
own, were almost looking for an excuse to say `Well if that's
what the mayor thinks, then maybe we ought to go ahead,'"
explained Bernie Schweid. A few weeks later on May 10, six
Nashville lunch counters began serving blacks. The students
in Nashville had won an important victory.
The sit-ins, however, were not over. By August 1961, they had
attracted over 70,000 participants and generated over 3,000
arrests. They continued in some areas of the South until and
even after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
declared segregation at lunch counters unlawful. In addition,
the technique of the sit-ins was used to integrate other
public facilities, such as movie theaters, and SNCC, the
student group that rose out of the sit-ins, continued to be
involved in the civil rights movement for many years. Perhaps
most importantly, the sit-ins marked a change in the civil
rights movement. In the words of journalist Louis
Lomax, "They were proof that the Negro leadership class,
epitomized by the NAACP, was no longer the prime mover in the
Negro's social revolt. The demonstrations have shifted the
desegregation battles from the courtroom to the marketplace."
They showed that nonviolent direct action and youth could be
very useful weapons in the war against segregation.
Copyright © 1997 Lisa Cozzens
Nov 2, 2010 "Assata Shakur Liberation Day" marks 31 yrs of freedom for our Comrade Assata Shakur, Our Warrior was liberated from a NJ prison by Comrades In The Black Liberation Army 
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