The sit-in movement, sit-in campaign or student sit-in movement, were a wave of sit-ins that followed the Greensboro sit-ins on February 1, 1960 in North Carolina. The sit-in movement employed the tactic of nonviolentdirect action and was a pivotal event during the Civil Rights Movement.[1]
African-American college students attending historically Black colleges and universities in the United States powered the sit-in movement across the country. Many students across the country followed by example, as sit-ins provided a powerful tool for students to use to attract attention.[2] The students of Baltimore made use of this in 1960 where many used the efforts to desegregate department store restaurants, which proved to be successful lasting about three weeks. This was one small role Baltimore played in the civil rights movement of the 1960s. The city facilitated social movements across the country as it saw bus and taxi companies hiring African-Americans in 1951–1952.[3] Sit-ins also frequented segregated facilities in Oklahoma City between 1958 and 1964.[4]
Students at Baltimore, Maryland's, Morgan State College had successfully deployed sit-ins and other direct action protest tactics against lunch counters in that city since at least 1953. One notable successful student sit-in which occurred in Baltimore was in 1955 at Read's Drug Store.[5] Despite also being led by students and successfully resulting in the end of segregation at a store lunch counter, the Read's Drug Store sit-in would not receive the same level of attention that was later given to the Greensboro sit-ins.[6] Two store lunch counter sit-ins which occurred in Wichita, Kansas and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 1958 also proved successful, and would employ tactics which were in fact similar to the future Greensboro sit-ins.[7][8] The local chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality had had similar success. Witnessing the unprecedented visibility afforded in the white-oriented mainstream media to the 1960 sit-ins in Greensboro, North Carolina, Morgan students (and others, including those from the Johns Hopkins University) continued sit-in campaigns already underway at department store restaurants near their campus. There were massive amounts of support from the community for the students’ efforts, but more importantly, white involvement and support grew in favor of desegregation of department store restaurants.[9]
^ Students from Friendship Junior College protested. A group of nine students known as the Friendship Nine would use the "jail no bail" tactic later duplicated by other protestors. The sit-in is regarded as the first to use the tactic, but Christopher W. Schmidt challenges this assertion. Patricia Stephens Due is sometimes credited as the first to use the tactic.[41]
^Flowers, Deidre B. (January 2005). "The Launching of the Student Sit-in Movement: The Role of Black Women at Bennett College". The Journal of African American History. 90 (1–2): 52–63. doi:10.1086/jaahv90n1-2p52. ISSN1548-1867. S2CID140781391.
^William H. Chafe (April 1982). "Civilities and Civil Rights: Greensboro, North Carolina, and the Black Struggle for Freedom". The American Historical Review. New York: Oxford University Press: xii, 436. doi:10.1086/ahr/87.2.565. ISSN1937-5239.
^Shah, Aarushi H. (November 2012). "All of Africa Will Be Free Before We Can Get a Lousy Cup of Coffee: The Impact of the 1943 Lunch Counter Sit-Ins on the Civil Rights Movement". The History Teacher. 46 (1): 127–147.
^Jensen, F. Kenneth (1992). "The Houston Sit-In Movement of 1960–61". In Beeth, Howard; Wintz, Cary D. (eds.). Black Dixie: Afro-Texan History and Culture in Houston. Texas A&M University Press. ISBN 9780890964941.
^Berman, David; Cole, Thomas R. (1998). The Strange Demise of Jim Crow: How Houston Desegregated Its Public Accommodations, 1959–1963 (Video recording). California Newsreel. OCLC44721721.
^Fleming, Cynthia Griggs (Spring 1990). "White Lunch Counters and Black Consciousness: The Story of the Knoxville Sit-ins". Tennessee Historical Quarterly. 49 (1): 40–52.
^Zagumny, Lisa L. (Winter 2001). "Sit-Ins in Knoxville, Tennessee: A Case Study of Political Rhetoric". The Journal of Negro History. 86 (1): 45–54. doi:10.2307/1350178. JSTOR1350178. S2CID141496195.
^Garrow, David J. (1989). Atlanta Georgia, 1960–1961: Sit Ins and Student Activism. Carlson Publishing. ISBN 9780926019058.
^Hine, William C. (October 1996). "Civil Rights and Campus Wrongs". South Carolina Historical Magazine. 97 (4): 320.
^Seals, Donald Jr. (January 2003). "The Wiley-Bishop Student Movement: A Case Study in the 1960 Civil Rights Sit-Ins". The Southwestern Historical Quarterly. 106 (3): 418–440.
Meier, August; Rudwick, Elliott M. (1975). CORE: A Study in the Civil Rights Movement, 1942–1968. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 9780252005671.
Morgan, Iwan W.; Davies, Philip (2012). From Sit-ins to SNCC: The Student Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. University Press of Florida. ISBN 9780813041513.
Oppenheimer, Martin (1989). The Sit-In Movement of 1960. Carlson Publishing. ISBN 9780926019102.
Paulsen, Monrad G. (1964). "The Sit-in Cases of 1964: "But Answer Came There None"". Supreme Court Review. 1964: 137–. doi:10.1086/scr.1964.3108696. S2CID147484895.
Riva, Sarah (Autumn 2012). "Desegregating Downtown Little Rock: The Field Reports of SNCC's Bill Hansen, October 23 to December 3, 1962". The Arkansas Historical Quarterly. 71 (3): 264–282.
Schmidt, Christopher W. (February 1, 2015). "Divided by Law: The Sit-Ins and the Role of the Courts in the Civil Rights Movement". Law and History Review. 33 (1): 93–149. doi:10.1017/S0738248014000509. S2CID232400894.