Local sit-ins helped further civil rights movement
Staying true to their non-violent principles amid adversity, protesting students struck mighty blow against Jim Crow racism
Sixty years ago, on Feb. 1, four black college freshmen ignited the sit-in movement that would result in a major civil rights victory and propel student activism to unprecedented heights.
Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, David Richmond, and Ezell Blair Jr. (now Jibreel Khazan) entered F.W. Woolworth in Greensboro, N.C., bought items, then sat at the “whites-only” lunch counter and ordered food. After being refused service, the young men, later called the “Greensboro Four,” continued to sit-in at the lunch counter.
They returned with more of their schoolmates from North Carolina A&T State College the next day and hundreds more joined the growing movement by the end of the week. Within a month, students across the South were sitting-in at their local Woolworth’s, refusing to leave until the stores changed their racist policies.
Woolworth’s became an ideal target for students because it financially depended on black patronage, yet subjected those same customers to racial discrimination in its stores. The coordinated demonstrations of more than 50,000 protesters put insurmountable pressure on the national chain, causing Woolworth’s to desegregate its lunch counters by the end of summer in 1960. Within seven months, black students elevated mass-coordinated, national student activism in the United States, while striking a mighty blow against Jim Crow racism. En route to victory, however, sit-in participants endured death threats, violent attacks, incarceration and police brutality.
Yet, in the face of adversity, the students succeeded due to their commitment to their principles and strategic brilliance.
As the sit-ins escalated, students sought to galvanize their momentum under an autonomous apparatus to guide their collective efforts. Accordingly, in April 1960, students from across the country gathered at Shaw University, in Raleigh, N.C., and formulated their own student-led organization, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
SNCC would become one of the most impressive organizations of the civil rights movement, successfully utilizing sitins, freedom rides and mass voter registration drives throughout the 1960s.
Beyond birthing SNCC, the student-led sit-in movement would be responsible for impacting all student activism of the 1960s and beyond to extraordinary effectiveness.
Student activists of the Black Power movement, anti-war movement and Students for a Democratic Society could all attribute major elements of their effectiveness to the heroism exhibited in Greensboro. Even recent episodes of student activism have correlations to the 1960 student movement (i.e. University of Missouri student protests in 2015).
Altogether, the students of the sit-in movement established their distinct importance within the larger black freedom movement (1619-present) in addition to providing a blueprint for future student activists.
Virginia students played a historic role to the overall movement for two distinct reasons.
First, Virginia became the first state outside of North Carolina to experience student sit-ins, as black students from Hampton Institute sat in at Woolworth’s in Hampton on Feb. 10, gathering 600 protesters within days.
On Feb. 12, 38 protesters sat in at Woolworth’s in downtown Norfolk, while three high school girls ignited a sit-in at Rose’s and Bradshaw-Diehl department stores in Portsmouth. The Portsmouth sit-ins would lead to the second area of distinction for Virginia, as it became the first site of significant violence during the sit-in movement.
Violence erupted within a week of the first Portsmouth sit-in, as classmates joined the young women from I.C. Norcom High School.
At Feb. 16 protests, white antiprotesters assaulted black students with fists and weapons.
Unlike in other sit-in cities, the Portsmouth students fought back when attacked as police dispersed the melee with water hoses and by unleashing police dogs solely on the black students. More significant than the violence itself was the students’ efforts to quickly reshape their movement in alignment with the other sit-in sites, grounded in non-violent principles.
Accordingly, the Portsmouth students accepted the Congress of Racial Equality’s offer to conduct passive resistance workshops with them. Soon after the successful training, the Portsmouth students reignited their movement without incidents of retaliation toward violent antagonists.
Violent exchanges were minimal in the sit-in movement, as student activists across the nation prided themselves in nonviolent means toward achieving their goals, as a reflection of the civil rights ethos.
Dr. Kelton Edmonds, a native of Portsmouth and I.C. Norcom High School graduate, is a professor of history at California University of Pennsylvania.