The sit-in movement, sit-in campaign, or student sit-in movement, was a wave of sit-ins that followed the Greensboro sit-ins on February 1, 1960, led by students at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical Institute (A&T). The sit-in movement employed the tactic of nonviolentdirect action and was a pivotal event during the Civil Rights Movement.
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. The students of Baltimore made use of this in 1960 when 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 as it saw bus and taxi companies hiring African Americans in 1951–1952. Sit-ins also frequented segregated facilities in Oklahoma City between 1958 and 1964.
Students at Morgan State College in Baltimore, Maryland, successfully deployed sit-ins and other direct action protest tactics against lunch counters in the city since at least 1953. One notable successful student sit-in occurred in 1955 at Read's Drug Store. 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. Two store lunch counter sit-ins which occurred in Wichita, Kansas and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 1958 also proved successful, and would employ tactics that were in fact similar to the future Greensboro sit-ins. 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 student’s efforts, but more importantly, white involvement and support grew in favor of the desegregation of department store restaurants. (Full article...)
Image 6Additional image of Civil Rights protestors executing a sit-in at a Woolworth's in Durham, North Carolina on February 10th of 1960. (from Sit-in movement)
Image 7Leaders of the March on Washington speak to the news media after meeting with President Kennedy at the White House. (from March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom)
Image 18Rosa Parks being fingerprinted by Deputy Sheriff D.H. Lackey after her arrest for boycotting public transportation (from Montgomery bus boycott)
Image 28Kennedy meets with march leaders. Left to Right – Willard Wirtz, Matthew Ahmann, Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, Rabbi Joachin Prinz, Eugene Carson Blake, A. Philip Randolph, President John F. Kennedy, Vice President Lyndon Johnson, Walter Reuther, Whitney Young, Floyd McKissick, Roy Wilkins (not in order) (from March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom)
Image 30Rosa Parks being fingerprinted by Deputy Sheriff D.H. Lackey after being arrested on February 22, 1956, during the Montgomery bus boycott. (from African-American women in the civil rights movement)
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