Sit-in

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A sit-in or sit-down is a form of direct action that involves one or more persons nonviolently occupying an area for a protest, often to promote political, social, or economic change.

1 Process
2 History
3 Civil Rights Movement
4 1958 Oklahoma City sit-ins
5 1960 Greensboro and Nashville sit-ins
6 See also
7 References
8 External links

[edit] Process

In sit-ins, protesters usually seat themselves at some strategic location (inside a restaurant, in a street to block it, in a government or corporate office, and so on). They remain until they are evicted, usually by force, or arrested, or until their requests have been met. Sit-ins have historically been a highly successful form of protest because they cause disruption that draws attention to the protest and by proxy the protesters' cause. They are a non-violent way to effectually shut down an area or business. The forced removal of protesters, and sometimes the use of violence against them, often arouses sympathy from the public, increasing the chances of the demonstrators reaching their goal.

A sit-in is similar to a sit-down strike. However, whereas a sit-in involves protesters, a sit-down strike involves striking workers occupying the area in which they would be working and refusing to leave so they can not be replaced with scabs. The sit-down strike was the precursor to the sit-in.

[edit] History

Sit-ins were first widely employed by Mohandas Gandhi in South African strikes and later the Indian independence movement, and were later expanded on by Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and others during the American Civil Rights Movement. In the 1960s, students used this method of protest during the student movements, such as the protests in Germany. The Young Lords in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood used it successfully for a whole week to win community demands for low income housing investment at the Mckormick Theological Seminary.

[edit] Civil Rights Movement

Although never used to block public streets, sit-ins were an integral part of the non-violent strategy of civil disobedience and mass protests that eventually led to passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which ended legally-sanctioned racial segregation in the United States. The Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) conducted sit-ins as early as the 1940s. Ernest Calloway refers to Bernice Fisher as "Godmother of the restaurant 'sit-in' technique."^[1] In August, 1939, African-American attorney Samuel Wilbert Tucker organized a sit-in at the then-segregated Alexandria, Virginia library.^[2] Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) labor delegates had a brief, spontaneous lunch counter sit-in during their 1947 Columbus, Ohio convention.^[3].

In one of the earliest racially-connected sit-ins, followers of Father Divine and the International Peace Mission Movement joined with the Cafeteria Workers Union, Local 302, in September 1939 to protest racially unfair hiring practices at New York's Shack Sandwich Shops, Inc. According to the New York Times, Sep 23, 1939, "–Ž"On Thursday between 75 and 100 followers showed up at the restaurant at Forty-first Street and Lexington Avenue, where most of the strike activity has been concentrated, and groups went into the place, purchased five-cent cups of coffee, and conducted what might be described as a kind of customers' nickel sit down strike. Other patrons were unable to find seats."^[4]

With the encouragement of Melvin B. Tolson and James L. Farmer, students from Wiley and Bishop Colleges organized the first sit-ins in Texas in the rotunda of the Harrison County Courthouse in Marshall, Texas. This sit-in directly challenged the oldest White Citizens Party in Texas and would culminate in the reversal of Jim Crow laws in the state and the desegregation of postgraduate studies in Texas by the Sweatt v. Painter (1950) verdict.

[edit] 1958 Oklahoma City sit-ins

The first organized lunch-counter sit-in for the purpose of integrating segregated establishments began in July 1958 in Wichita, Kansas at Dockum Drugs, a store in the old Rexall chain.^[5] In early August the drugstore became integrated. A few weeks later on August 19, 1958 in Oklahoma City a nationally recognized sit-in at the Katz Drug Store lunch counter occurred. The Oklahoma City Sit-in Movement was led by NAACP Youth Council leader Clara Luper, a local high school teacher, and young local students, including Luper's eight-year old daughter, who suggested the Sit-in be held. The group quickly desegregated the Katz Drug Store lunch counters. It took several more years, but she and the students, using the tactic, integrated all of Oklahoma City's eating establishments. Today, in downtown Wichita, Kansas, stands a statue depicting a waitress at a counter serving people honors this pioneering sit-in.

[edit] 1960 Greensboro and Nashville sit-ins

Following the Oklahoma City sit-ins, the tactic of non-violent student sit-ins spread. The Greensboro Sit-In at a Woolworth's in Greensboro, North Carolina, on February 1, 1960 launched a wave of anti-segregation sit-ins across the South and opened a national awareness of the depth of segregation in the nation.^[6] Within weeks, sit-in campaigns had begun in nearly a dozen cities, primarily targeting Woolworth's and S. H. Kress and other stores of other national chains.^[7]

The largest, and best organized of these sit-in campaigns was the already ongoing, in terms of its planning and groundwork, Nashville sit-ins. They involved hundreds of participants, and led to the successful desegregation of Nashville lunch counters.^[8] Most of the participants in the Nashville sit-ins were college students, and many, such as Diane Nash, James Bevel, Bernard Lafayette, and C.T. Vivian, went on to lead, strategize, and direct almost every aspect of the nation's Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. The students of the Historically black colleges and universities in the city played a critical role in implementing the Nashville sit-ins.

[edit] See also

Bed-In, peace campaigns by John Lennon and Yoko Ono in 1969
Die-in
Human Be-In
Teach-in
Work-in
Occupation (protest)

[edit] References

^ OF TIME AND SOUND, Requiem For A Free, Compassionate Spirit, by Ernest Galloway, published in Missouri Teamster, May 12, 1966, Page 7.
^ "America's First Sit-Down Strike: The 1939 Alexandria Library Sit-In". City of Alexandria. http://oha.alexandriava.gov/bhrc/lessons/bh-lesson2_reading2.html. Retrieved 2009-08-22.
^ (NYT Mar 17, 1947: 16)
^ "DIVINE'S FOLLOWERS GIVE AID TO STRIKERS; With Evangelist's Sanction They 'Sit Down' in Restaurant". New York Times (US). 1939-09-23. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FA0A17FA3B54107A93C1AB1782D85F4D8385F9. Retrieved 2010-07-20. "[The workers] are seeking wage increases, shorter hours, a closed shop and cessation of what they charge has been racial discrimination."
^ [http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6355095
^ First Southern Sit-in, Greensboro NC ~ Civil Rights Movement Veterans
^ Sit-ins Spread Across the South ~ Civil Rights Movement Veterans
^ Nashville Student Movement ~ Civil Rights Movement Veterans

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Sit-in

Award Winning Documentary: "February One" tells the inspiring story surrounding the 1960 Greensboro lunch counter sit-ins that helped revitalize the Civil Rights Movement
Sit-In: A Tactical Analysis, By Aaron Kreider – Essay based on research on student sit-ins.
National Young Lords- Brief notes on the origins of the Young Lords
Almost-Forgotten History – Story of the Wichita Dockum sit-ins
Civil Rights Movement Veterans Civil Rights Movement Veterans ~ History, personal stories, and photos of the Freedom Movement

v – d – e African-American Civil Rights Movement

Topics and events (timeline)	Albany Movement – Birmingham campaign – Black Power – Brown v. Board of Education – Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church – Chicago Open Housing Movement – Civil Rights Act of 1964 – Civil Rights Act of 1968 – Dexter Avenue Baptist Church – Emmett Till – Freedom Riders – Mississippi Freedom Summer – Greensboro sit-ins – Greyhound Bus Station (Montgomery, Alabama) – Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections – Little Rock Nine – March on Washington – Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party – Montgomery Bus Boycott – Nashville sit-ins – Poor People's Campaign – Selma Voting Rights Movement – 1963 16th Street Baptist Church bombing – Twenty-fourth Amendment – Voting Rights Act of 1965

Activists	Ralph Abernathy – Victoria Gray Adams – Ella Baker – James Bevel – Claude Black – Unita Blackwell – Julian Bond – Stokely Carmichael – J.L. Chestnut – Shirley Chisholm – Dorothy Cotton – Claudette Colvin – Vernon Dahmer – Annie Devine – Medgar Evers – Chuck Fager – James Farmer – James Forman – Marie Foster – Prathia Hall – Fannie Lou Hamer – Dorothy Height – Lola Hendricks – Aaron Henry – Myles Horton – T. R. M. Howard – Jesse Jackson – Jimmie Lee Jackson – T.J. Jemison – Judge Frank Johnson – Matthew Jones – Clyde Kennard – A.D. King – Coretta Scott King – Martin Luther King, Jr. – Bernard Lafayette – James Lawson – Bernard Lee – John Lewis – Viola Liuzzo – Z. Alexander Looby – Joseph Lowery – Clara Luper – Malcolm X – Thurgood Marshall – James Meredith – Amzie Moore – Bob Moses – William Moyer – Diane Nash – E. D. Nixon – James Orange – James Peck – Rosa Parks – Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. – Al Raby – A. Philip Randolph – Amelia Boynton Robinson – Bayard Rustin – Charles Sherrod – Fred Shuttlesworth – Modjeska Monteith Simkins – Kelly Miller Smith – Charles Kenzie Steele – C. T. Vivian – Wyatt Tee Walker – Roy Wilkins – Hosea Williams – Judge John Minor Wisdom – Andrew Young – Whitney Young

Activist groups	Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) – Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) – Highlander Folk School – Leadership Conference on Civil Rights – Montgomery Improvement Association – National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) – NAACP Youth Council – National Council of Negro Women – National Urban League – Operation Breadbasket – Regional Council of Negro Leadership – Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) – Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) – Women's Political Council

Historians	Taylor Branch – Clayborne Carson – Michael Eric Dyson – Chuck Fager – Adam Fairclough – David Garrow – David Halberstam – Diane McWhorter

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