Lunch Counter Sit-Ins

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Eunice Green
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1 Lunch Counter Sit-Ins 1. Sitting for Justice: Woolworth s Lunch Counter On February 1, 1960, four African American college students sat down at a lunch counter at Woolworth s in Greensboro, North Carolina, and politely asked for service. Their request was refused. When asked to leave, they remained in their seats. Their passive resistance and peaceful sit-down demand helped ignite a youth-led movement to challenge racial inequality throughout the South. Woolworth lunch counter In Greensboro, hundreds of students, civil rights organizations, churches, and members of the community joined in a six-month-long protest. Their commitment ultimately led to the desegregation of the F. W. Woolworth lunch counter on July 25, 1960.

2 Greensboro first day Ezell A. Blair, Jr. (now Jibreel Khazan), Franklin E. McCain, Joseph A. McNeil, and David L. Richmond leave the Woolworth store after the first sit-in on February 1, (Courtesy of Greensboro News and Record) Woolworth sit-in

3 On the second day of the Greensboro sit-in, Joseph A. McNeil and Franklin E. McCain are joined by William Smith and Clarence Henderson at the Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina. (Courtesy of Greensboro News and Record) Source: Watch the short video Oral history accounts of the sit-ins Interviews about the lunch counter sit-ins.

4 4. The Sit-Ins Off Campus Into Movement The Sit-Ins I'm going to sit at the welcome table... February 1st, 1960, Greensboro NC. Four students from North Carolina A&T sit down at a "whites-only" Woolworth's lunch counter and ask to be served. This action by David Richmond, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair, and Joseph McNeil ignites a wave of student sitins and protests that flash like fire across the South. A fire for justice that no amount of beatings, jails, or firehoses, can extinguish. Within days sit-ins are occurring in dozens of Southern towns, and in the North supporting picket-lines spring up at Woolworth and Kress stores from New York to San Francisco.

5 Protests continue outside the segregated Mayfair Cafeteria, Greensboro, In Harlem and many other northern communities, Movement supporters picket Woolworths and other chain stores to support the southern sit-ins.

6 Baltimore, MD. Morgan State students arrested for protests at the segregated Northwood Theater.

7 Nashville, February, Just days after the Greensboro sit-in, students from American Baptist Theologic Seminary, Fisk University, Meharry Medical College, and Tennessee A&I begin confronting segregation in Nashville TN. They politely sit at "whites-only" lunch counters and restaurants. They are met with violence, brutality, and arrest. Hundreds are jailed, and thousands march in protests that continue for years. Nashville Student Movement leader Diane Nash. Rather than serve people of color, this Walgreen's lunchcounter closes "in the interests of public safety." Other cafes and lunch- counters call the cops to arrest Blacks for the crime of ordering a cup of coffee in defiance of the segregation laws.

8 Students busted for protesting segregation fill the Nashville jail to overflowing. John Lewis, O.D. Hunt, and Dennis Gregory Foote, after their arrest at a downtown lunch counter.

9 Fisk University student Jean Wynona Fleming behind bars in the Nashville jail. Gasping for breath, James Bevel and John Lewis are trapped inside a Nashville restaurant filled with insecticide gas when the manager turns on a fumigating machine to disrupt a sit-in. C.T. Vivian, Diane Nash, and Bernard LaFayette leading protest march in Nashville, With Curtis Murphy they confront the Mayor on the Courthouse steps.

10 Slowly, too slowly, victories are won at great cost. Matthew Walker, Peggy Alexander, Diane Nash and Stanley Hemphill eat lunch at the previously segregated counter of the Post House Restaurant in the Greyhound bus terminal. This is the first time since the start of the sit-ins that Blacks are served at previously all-white counters in Nashville Sit-ins, swim-ins, read-ins, pray-ins, marches, and other protests erupt across the South at segregated restaurants, swimming pools, libraries, churches...

11 Peoples Drug store, Arlington, VA They closed the lunch counter rather than serve Black students. Janice Jackson, Evelyn Pierce, and Ethel Sawyer of the Tougaloo Nine, under arrest for the crime of reading in a "white only" libraray. Jackson, MS, 1961.

13 Farmville, VA Student sit-ins being dragged away from the College Shoppe Restaurant. Richmond, VA

14 Orangeburg, SC. March, 1960 Sit-in at Woolworths in Jacksonville, FL

15 Kress 5&10 store removes stools to prevent students from integrating the lunch counter with a sit-in, Orangeburg, SC.

16 More than 1,000 students march in support of antisegregation, sit-ins at downtown lunch counters.

17 Police attack the marchers with tear gas and fire hoses, and force them into the "stockade." Woolworth sit-in, Jackson, MS. May 28, 1963 Other sit-ins some in a split-off section and some briefly with our heavily targeted part were Memphis Norman (himself brutally struck and kicked unconscious), Pearlena Lewis, Lois Chaffee, James Beard, George Raymond, and Walter Williams. )

18 The response by Jackson's Black community to the sit-in and its violence was tremendously positive. The mass meeting that night was the biggest yet despite the hordes of hostile city and state police and sheriffs' forces surrounding the church: close to a thousand people attended. Source:

How successful was the Civil Rights campaign in achieving its aims between 1950 and 1965? I have a dream...

How successful was the Civil Rights campaign in achieving its aims between 1950 and 1965? I have a dream... Civil Rights Aims Desegregation Voting Rights Civil Rights End to Discrimination Methods Legal