![]() ![]() This quality has given it the extraordinary power and discipline which every thinking person observes” ( Papers 5:450).Īlthough many of the student sit-in protesters were affiliated with National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) youth groups, the new student movement offered an implicit challenge to the litigation strategy of the nation’s oldest civil rights group. King wrote: “The key significance of the student movement lies in the fact that from its inception, everywhere, it has combined direct action with non-violence. Although protesters were routinely heckled and beaten by segregationists and arrested by police, their determination was unyielding. Nonviolence was a central component of the student-led demonstrations however, many protesters were not met with peaceful responses from the public. The Nashville movement proved successful, and the students grew ever more confident in their ability to direct campaigns without adult leadership. Many of them, including John Lewis, Diane Nash, and Marion Barry, would later become leaders of the southern civil rights struggle. Vanderbilt University student James Lawson led workshops on Gandhian nonviolence that attracted a number of students from Nashville’s black colleges. The sustained student protests in Nashville, Tennessee, were particularly well organized. By the end of the month, sit-ins had taken place at more than 30 locations in 7 states, and by the end of April over 50,000 students had participated. The Greensboro protesters eventually agreed to the mayor’s request to halt protest activities while city officials sought “a just and honorable resolution,” but black students in other communities launched lunch counter protests of their own (Carson, 10). By day three of the campaign, the students formed the Student Executive Committee for Justice to coordinate protests. Although no confrontations occurred, the second sit-in attracted the local media. The following morning about two dozen students arrived at Woolworth’s and sat at the lunch counter. The four students remained seated for almost an hour until the store closed. When a waitress asked them to leave, they politely refused to their surprise, they were not arrested. ![]() The students-Joseph McNeil, Ezell Blair, Franklin McCain, and David Richmond-purchased several items in the store before sitting at the counter reserved for white customers. The sit-ins started on 1 February 1960, when four black students from North Carolina A & T College sat down at a Woolworth lunch counter in downtown Greensboro, North Carolina. Martin Luther King, Jr., described the student sit-ins as an “electrifying movement of Negro students shattered the placid surface of campuses and communities across the South,” and he expressed pride in the new activism for being “initiated, fed and sustained by students” ( Papers 5:447 368). The sit-in campaigns of 1960 and the ensuing creation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) demonstrated the potential strength of grassroots militancy and enabled a new generation of young people to gain confidence in their own leadership. ![]()
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