Civil Rights Tour - Chapter 6, Sit In Movement

Greensboro Sit-In Movement (britannica.com)

On the occasion of the deaths of C.T. Vivian and John R. Lewis, we look at some of the earlier history and formative years in what was to become the Civil Rights Movement of 1960s. The highly successful direct action campaigns that came about in that decade - Freedom Rides in the summer of 1961, The Birmingham Movement of 1963, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer and the Selma to Montgomery Voting Rights March in 1965, all of this was built on a foundation of previous organizing, smaller demonstrations, protests and direct action campaigns. The group that organized the Nashville sit-in movement had been meeting together, studying, training, and organizing for a couple of years beginning in 1957, and all of this in the shadow of the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, the event that many regard as the  as the symbolic "beginning" of the mass protest movement, where Martin Luther King was drawn into the movement as young Baptist Pastor.

The lunch counter "sit-in" was one of the more effective strategies of the grassroots civil rights movement of the 1960s, coming to prominence simultaneously in Greensboro, North Carolina and Nashville, Tennessee in February. The lunch counter "Sit-In" became an effective strategy of direct action leading to desegregation of businesses, lunch counters and restaurants in many cities. C.T. Vivian had employed the strategy in Illinois in 1947, and others did the same throughout the 1950s in many cities. A decade later in July of 1958, twenty year old Wichita University freshman Ronald Walters led another early sit-in effort in Wichita, Kansas. The effort led to a change in segregation policy across the Rexall drug store chain. Walters went on to a distinguished career as an academic in the area of African American politics and leadership.

For reasons hidden in history, the "sit-in" strategy did not take hold more widely in the Civil Rights movement until 1960; February 1, 1960 is widely regarded as the "beginning" of the Sit-In movement. This date marked the beginning of the effort by students of North Carolina in Greensboro, North Carolina, targeting the Woolworth Department Store lunch counters. The original four were Ezell Blair, Jr., Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, and David Richmond. Other students joined in subsequent days, and the movement spread from there, mainly driven by students at black colleges and universities.

Nashville Sit-In (blackpast.org)

Students at Fisk University and other schools in Nashville had been preparing for months for their own local grassroots efforts. The Nashville group included C. T. Vivian, Diane Nash, James Bevel, Bernard Lafayette, Marion Barry, and Lewis. They were led by 31 year old James Lawson, A Vanderbilt University Divinity student who was also the southern representative of CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), a movement of nonviolent resistance founded in Chicago in 1942. CORE had previously organized several movements including sit-ins and freedom rides.

These campaigns did not arise suddenly but came together after months and years of study, planning, and relationship building - the Nashville group meeting at Fisk  had grown from an original ten to more than 20 regular attendees, mostly black and some white, from Fisk, Vanderbilt, Tennessee State, Meharry Medical School and the Baptist Seminary. Lawson led the group in wide ranging discussions of religious and philosophical topics and the history of nonviolent resistance including the work of Ghandi. Many in the group attended the Highlander Folk School in the fall of 1958, a well established training center for grassroots political activism, as well as the summer 1959 Institute on Nonviolent Resistance to Segregation at Spellman College in Atlanta where speakers included Bayard Rustin, Ella Baker and Will Campbell, and Lawson.

The group moved from theory and philosophy to situations, strategies, and tactics, to endure the violence and the abuse and to protect themselves, insofar as possible (and often it was not), from more serious injury. Lawson led the role play, "hovering over the action, pushing, prodding, teaching, cajoling. It was not enough, he would say, simply to endure a beating ... You have to do more than just not hit back. You have to have no desire to hit back. You have to love that person who's hitting you. You're going to love him." (Lewis, p. 85)

John Lewis under arrest, Nashville (tennessean.com)

On Lawson's leadership. Lewis further stated ... "Lawson spent as much time out in the community visiting local church and business groups as he did with us, and the black women of Nashville had made it clear to him which specific form of segregation in the city bothered them the most. They all pointed to the downtown department stores and the five-and-dimes where they shopped alongside white women and children, bought the same items at the same prices, but were forbidden in most cases to try on clothing and were barred in all cases from resting their feet and those of their children at the stores' lunch counter seats. It was humiliating, they said. It was insulting. ... This we decided, was where it would begin." (Lewis, p. 86)

And in February 1, 1960, as if to usher in a new decade of civil rights activism, the first major direct action of the 1960s began.

Part 6 in a series. Links to Parts 1 through 5 below:

Alabama Civil Rights Tour - Chapter 1: Tuskegee Institute

Chapter 2: Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955 - with updated photos

Chapter 3: Freedom Rides of 1961

Chapter 4: Birmingham Protest Movement of 1963

Chapter 5: Selma to Montgomery March / Voting Rights Act of 1965

Reflections on the 50th Anniversary of the Schoolhouse Door: June 11, 1963

Sources:

Walking With the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement. John Lewis, with Michael D'orso. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998.

Oxford Research Encyclopedia. "American History - Sit-In Movement." Christopher W. Schmidt. Accessed 7/19/2020.

The Atlantic. "John Lewis Was an American Founder." Adam Serwer, July 18, 2020.