Sit-Ins

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. Using the strategy of nonviolent resistance, students across the south began these sit-ins, and local authorities often used brutal force and violence to physically remove and restrain the activists.

Greensboro Sit-Ins

The Greensboro sit-ins were a series of nonviolent protests which led to the Woolworth's department store chain reversing its policy of racial segregation in the Southern United States. While not the first sit-ins of the African-American Civil Rights Movement, the Greensboro sit-ins were an instrumental action that led to increased national sentiment at a crucial period in U.S. history. The primary event took place at the Greensboro, North Carolina Woolworth's store.

On February 1, 1960, four students from the Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina—Ezell Blair, Jr., Joseph McNeil, David Richmond, and Franklin McCain—sat down at the segregated lunch counter to protest Woolworth's policy of excluding African Americans. They had specifically chosen Woolworth’s, because it was a national chain and was thus believed to be especially vulnerable to negative publicity. Following store policy, the lunch counter staff refused to serve the African American men at the "whites only" counter, and the store's manager asked them to leave. On the second day of the sit-ins, more than twenty African-American students who had been recruited from other campus groups came to the store to join the sit-in. The lunch counter staff continued to refuse service. On the fourth day of the sit-ins, more than 300 people took part. Hostile whites responded with threats and taunted the students by pouring sugar and ketchup on their heads. Organizers agreed to spread the sit-in protests to include the lunch counter at Greensboro's Kress store.

As early as one week after the Greensboro sit-in had begun, students in other North Carolina towns launched their own sit-ins. Demonstrations spread to towns near Greensboro, including Winston-Salem, Durham, Raleigh, and Charlotte. Out-of-state towns like Lexington, Kentucky and Richmond, Virginia also saw protests. 

Nashville's Sit-Ins

The Nashville sit-ins, which lasted from February 13 to May 10, 1960, were part of a nonviolent direct action campaign to end racial segregation at lunch counters in downtown Nashville, Tennessee. The first large-scale organized sit-in in Nashville was on Saturday, February 13. At about 12:30 pm, 124 students, most of them black, walked into the downtown Woolworths, S. H. Kress, and McClellan stores and asked to be served at the lunch counters. After the staff refused to serve them, they sat in the stores for two hours and then left without incident.

Nashville Sit-Ins

Nashville's sit-in campaign targeted downtown lunch counters such as this one at Walgreens drugstore.

Tensions mounted over the following week as sit-in demonstrations spread to other cities and race riots broke out in nearby Chattanooga. On February 27, the Nashville student activists held a fourth sit-in at the Woolworths, McClellan, and Walgreens stores. Crowds of white youths again gathered in the stores to taunt and harass the demonstrators. However, this time, police were not present. Eventually, several of the sit-in demonstrators were attacked by hecklers in the McClellan and Woolworths stores. Some were pulled from their seats and beaten, and one demonstrator was pushed down a flight of stairs. When police arrived, the white attackers fled and none were arrested. Police then ordered the demonstrators at all three locations to leave the stores. When the demonstrators refused to leave, they were arrested and loaded into police vehicles as onlookers applauded. Eighty-one students were arrested and charged with loitering and disorderly conduct.

The arrests brought a surge of media coverage to the sit-in campaign, including national television news coverage, front page stories in both of Nashville's daily newspapers, and an Associated Press story. The students generally viewed any media coverage as helpful to their cause, especially when it illustrated their commitment to nonviolence.

After weeks of secret negotiations between merchants and protest leaders, an agreement was finally reached during the first week of May. According to the agreement, gradual desegregation of the lunch counters would be implemented. Nashville thus became the first major city in the South to begin desegregating its public facilities.

The Movement Spreads

The successful six-month-long Greensboro sit-in initiated the student phase of the African American civil rights movement and, within two months, the sit-in movement had spread to 54 cities in nine states. Within a year, more than 100 cities had desegregated at least some public accommodations in response to student-led demonstrations. The sit-ins inspired other forms of nonviolent protest intended to desegregate public spaces. “Sleep-ins” occupied motel lobbies, “read-ins” filled public libraries, and churches became the sites of “pray-ins.”

Freedom Rides

Students also took part in the 1961 “freedom rides” organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The intent of the African American and white volunteers who undertook these bus rides south was to test enforcement of a U.S. Supreme Court decision, Boynton v. Virginia (1960) that prohibited segregation on interstate transportation and to protest segregated waiting rooms in southern terminals. During Freedom Rides, activists traveled through the Deep South to integrate seating patterns and desegregate bus terminals, including restrooms and water fountains, which proved to be a dangerous mission.

From Washington to New Orleans

The first Freedom Ride of the 1960s left Washington D.C. on May 4, 1961, and was scheduled to arrive in New Orleans on May 17. Led by CORE Director James Farmer, 13 riders (seven black, six white) left Washington, DC, on Greyhound and Trailways buses. Their plan was to ride through Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, ending in New Orleans, Louisiana where a civil rights rally was planned. Most of the Riders were from CORE and two were from SNCC; many were in their 40s and 50s.

The freedom riders encountered little difficulty until they reached Rock Hill, South Carolina, where a mob severely beat John Lewis, a freedom rider who later became chairman of SNCC. The danger increased as the riders continued through Georgia into Alabama, where one of the two buses was firebombed outside the town of Anniston. The second group continued to Birmingham, where the riders were attacked by the Ku Klux Klan as they attempted to disembark at the city bus station. The Birmingham, Alabama Police Commissioner Bull Connor and Police Sergeant Tom Cook (an avid Ku Klux Klan supporter) organized violence against the Freedom Riders with local Ku Klux Klan chapters. Freedom rides were stopped and beaten by mobs in Montgomery, leading to the dispatch of the Alabama National Guard to stop the violence.

In response to the national and international attention brought on by the Freedom Rides, President Kennedy urged a "cooling off period" to avoid international embarrassment, which was ignored by riders. The remaining activists continued to Mississippi, where they were arrested when they attempted to desegregate the waiting rooms in the Jackson bus terminal. 

Freedom Ride Violence

Two SNCC leaders after being beaten during the Freedom Ride

Impact of the Freedom Rides

Despite being faced with severe violence, the freedom rides made an impact. In September of 1961, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) issued new policies that went into effect on November 1. After the new ICC rule took effect, passengers were permitted to sit wherever they pleased on interstate buses and trains; "white" and "colored" signs came down in the terminals; racially segregated drinking fountains, toilets, and waiting rooms were consolidated; and the lunch counters began serving all customers, regardless of race.

Freedom Summer and Voter Registration

Jim Crow Barriers to Voting

Some of the greatest violence during this era was aimed at those who attempted to register African Americans to vote. Though Freedom Summer failed to register many voters, it significantly effected the course of the Civil Rights Movement. It helped break down decades of isolation and repression that were the foundation of the Jim Crow system. Before Freedom Summer, the national news media had paid little attention to the persecution of black voters in the Deep South and the dangers endured by black civil rights workers. 

When Mississippi ratified its constitution in 1890, the constitution had placed barriers to black voting with provisions such as poll taxes, residency requirements, and literacy tests. In the spring of 1962, SNCC began organizing voter registration in the Mississippi Delta area. Their efforts were met with fierce opposition from whites—arrests, beatings, shootings, arson, and murder. In addition, white employers fired blacks who tried to register to vote, and white landlords evicted them from their homes. Over the following years, the black voter registration campaign spread across the state.

Selma

SNCC had undertaken an ambitious voter registration program in Selma, Alabama, in 1963, but had made little headway. After local residents asked the SCLC for assistance, King came to Selma to lead several marches. On March 7, 1965, Hosea Williams of the SCLC and John Lewis of SNCC led a march of 600 people to walk from Selma to the state capital in Montgomery. Only six blocks into the march, state troopers and local law enforcement, some mounted on horseback, attacked the peaceful demonstrators. The national broadcast of the lawmen attacking unresisting marchers provoked a national response.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965

Eight days after the first march, President Johnson delivered a televised address to support the voting rights bill he had sent to Congress. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which suspended poll taxes, literacy tests, and other subjective voter tests that inherently legalized discrimination against African Americans. The act authorized Federal supervision of voter registration in states and individual voting districts where such tests were being used. Johnson reportedly told associates of his concern that by signing the bill, he had lost the support of white southern Democrats for the foreseeable future.

Following the Act, African Americans regained the power to vote, thus changing the political landscape of the South. When Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, only about 100 African Americans held elective office, all in northern states of the U.S. By 1989, there were more than 7,200 African Americans in office, including more than 4,800 in the South.