sit-in

(noun)

A form of direct action that involves one or more people nonviolently occupying an area for a protest, often to promote political, social, or economic change.

Related Terms

Examples of sit-in in the following topics:

  • Sit-Ins and Freedom Rides

    • During the sit-in movement of the 1960s, students and other civil rights activists would "sit-in" at whites-only locations.
    • In the first sit-ins, students would sit at white-only lunch counters and refuse to leave until they had been served.
    • As early as one week after the Greensboro sit-in had begun, students in other North Carolina towns launched their own sit-ins.
    • The first large-scale organized sit-in in Nashville was on Saturday, February 13.
    • Interviews with some of the sit-in participants and the effect of the sit-ins

  • The Emergence of the Civil Rights Movement

    • Forms of protest or civil disobedience included boycotts such as the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott in Alabama; "sit-ins" such as the influential Greensboro sit-ins; marches, such as the Selma to Montgomery marches in Alabama or the march on Washington as well as a wide range of other nonviolent activities .
    • The Greensboro sit-ins were a series of nonviolent protests in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1960, which led to the Woolworth department store chain removing its policy of racial segregation in the Southern United States. 
    • While not the first sit-in of the Civil Rights Movement, the Greensboro sit-ins were an instrumental action, and also the most well-known sit-ins of the Civil Rights Movement.
    • These sit-ins led to increased national sentiment at a crucial period in US history. 
    • Scenes from Civil Rights March in Washington, D.C. in August 1963.

  • Student Rebellions and the New Left

    • The organization developed rapidly in the mid-1960s before dissolving at its last convention in 1969.
    • Shortly after, in February of 1965, President Johnson dramatically escalated the war in Vietnam by bombing North Vietnam and introducing ground troops in the South.
    • The school year started on October 17 at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, with a large demonstration against the university's complicity in the war in allowing military recruiters on campus.
    • Peaceful at first, the demonstrations turned into a sit-in that was violently dispersed by the Madison police and riot squad, resulting in many injuries and arrests.
    • Local chapters cooperated in rallies, marches, sit-ins, and teach-ins, and the effort culminated in a one-day strike on April 26.

  • The Glorious Revolution

    • The establishment of a Roman Catholic dynasty in the kingdoms was now likely.
    • After only two minor clashes between the two opposing armies in England, and anti-Catholic riots in several towns, James's regime collapsed.
    • The Revolution permanently ended any chance of Catholicism becoming re-established in England.
    • Catholics were denied the right to vote and sit in the Westminster Parliament for over a century; they were also denied commissions in the army, and the monarch was forbidden to be Catholic or to marry a Catholic, a prohibition that continues today.
    • King James was deposed in the Revolution of 1688 by William III.

  • The Impeachment and Trial of Johnson

    • The impeachment of Andrew Johnson during the Reconstruction era was the first impeachment of a sitting president in the history of the U.S.
    • The impeachment of Andrew Johnson was one of the most dramatic events that occurred during the Reconstruction era in the United States, and was the first impeachment in history of a sitting United States president.
    • Johnson was impeached in the U.S.
    • In 1867, Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act in an effort to protect Edwin M.
    • A trial began in the Senate in March .

  • Shuttle Diplomacy

    • Shuttle diplomacy is the action of a thrid party in serving as an intermediary between principals in a dispute.
    • Kissinger also oversaw United States negotiations in Vietnam in the 1960's.
    • He reports that, "In August 1965...
    • I toured Vietnam first for two weeks in October and November 1965, again for about ten days in July 1966, and a third time for a few days in October 1966...
    • In 1974 a leftist military coup overthrew the sitting government in Portugal.

  • The Election of 1840

    • Van Buren, the incumbent, was renominated in Baltimore in May 1840.
    • The party refused to renominate his sitting Vice President, Richard Mentor Johnson.
    • He developed a popular slogan "Tippecanoe and Tyler too," which referred to Harrison's military victory over a group of Shawnee Indians at a river in Indiana called Tippecanoe in 1811.
    • Said one Democratic newspaper: "Give him a barrel of hard cider, and…a pension of two thousand [dollars] a year…and…he will sit the remainder of his days in his log cabin. " Whigs, eager to deliver what the public wanted, took advantage of this and declared that Harrison was "the log cabin and hard cider candidate," a man of the common people from the rough-and-tumble West.
    • The extent of Van Buren's unpopularity was clearly demonstrated in Harrison's victories in New York, the president's home state, and in Tennessee, where the state's aging hero Andrew Jackson came out of retirement to stump for his former vice president.

  • A New Direction for Unions

    • Consequently, in the context of labor legislation and labor unions discussed in this module, the term "worker" refers mostly to industrial workers.
    • In 1938, the AFL expelled the CIO and its members.
    • New more radical trends in organized labor also translated into more radical forms of protest, most notably sit-downs.
    • In February 1937, nearly 200,000 General Motors workers refused to work in Flint, Michigan.
    • The several week-long protest resulted in a contract that satisfied the protesting workers and shortly after that, hundreds of sit-downs followed across the country.

  • English Administration of the Colonies

    • These governments were all subordinate to the king in London and had no explicit relationship with the British Parliament.
    • Each colony had a paid colonial agent in London to represent its interests.
    • The governor's council would advise the governor and sit as an upper house when the assembly was in session.
    • Massachusetts began as a charter colony in 1684 but became a provincial colony in 1691.
    • A joint stock company was a project in which investors would buy shares of stock in building a new colony.

  • Indian Resistance and Survival

    • As American expansion continued, Native Americans resisted settlers' encroachment in several regions of the new nation (and in unorganized territories), from the Northwest to the Southeast, and then in the West, as settlers encountered the tribes of the Great Plains.
    • In the latter stages, Tecumseh's group allied with the British forces in the War of 1812 and was instrumental in the conquest of Detroit.
    • Conflicts in the Southeast included the Creek War and Seminole Wars, both before and after the Indian Removals of most members of the Five Civilized Tribes, beginning in the 1830s under President Andrew Jackson.
    • Defeats included the Sioux Uprising of 1862, the Sand Creek Massacre (1864), and Wounded Knee in 1890.
    • In 2006, the U.S.