Charleston sit-ins

Last updated
Charleston sit-ins
Part of the Civil Rights Movement
in South Carolina
281 King.jpg
DateApril 1, 1960
Location
S.H. Kress lunch counter, 281 King Street, Charleston, South Carolina
Caused by
  • Racial segregation in public accommodations
Parties
  • students

The Charleston sit-ins were a series of peaceful protests during the sit-in movement of the civil rights movement of the 1960s in Charleston, South Carolina. Unlike at other sit-ins in the South where the protestors were mainly college students, the protestors in Charleston were mainly high school students. The earliest such protest was a sit-in at a lunch counter by Charleston high school students, but similar protests continued thereafter.

Contents

Initial S.H. Kress Sit-in

On April 1, 1960, 16 boys and 8 girls from Burke High School arrived at the S.H. Kress store on King Street and sat at a 52-person lunch counter at the back of the store. At 10:45 a.m., the students took consecutive seats at the counter, and they would not leave. During the afternoon, the students hummed songs, recited the Lord's Prayer, and recited the 23rd Psalm. At 4:45 p.m., an anonymous caller phoned in a possible bomb, and the police evacuated the store of about 100 patrons. (After a search, no bomb was found.) The students did not leave, so the police arrested them for trespassing. Each student was given a $10 bond, which J. Arthur Brown of the NAAACP paid for them. The students were John Bailey, James Gilbert Blake, Jenniesse Blake, Andrew Brown, Deloris Brown, Minerva Brown, Charles Butler, Mitchell Christopher, Allen Coley, Corelius Fludd, Harvey Gantt, Joseph Gerideau, Kennett Andrew German, Cecile Gordon, Annette Graham, Alfred Hamilton, Caroline Jenkins, Francis Johnson, Joseph Jones, Alvin Delford Latten, Verna Jean McNeil, David Paul Richardson, Arthuree Singleton, and Fred Smalls. [1]

Public Reaction

The Charleston newspaper responded with a strong editorial against the demonstration:

City police did not wish to arrest the students, though their mumbo-jumbo antics in quoting prayer and scripture were calculated to disturb the normal business of a reputable concern. When the students refused to move on closing of the store, the police were forced to make the arrests for which the students had come in the first place.

We are confident that sober, respectable citizens of both races are embarrassed at the deliberate dramatizing of racial division which in the past has been accepted by consent. In refusing to abide by customs that have preserved general peace and harmony, the students here and elsewhere are forcing the public to set up a new set of customs. [2]

Subsequent activities

Lunch counter sit-ins continued. On July 25, 1960, 11 Black students were refused service at the W.T. Grant lunch counter at 374 King Street. [3] On July 26, 1960, about 20 students arrived at the F.W. Woolworth Co. lunch counter, but they were refused service; the store removed the stools are the counter and replaced them only when a White patron arrived to provide a seat. [4] On some days, there were no sit-ins, but students picketed business or demonstrated. [5] Protests continued into 1961 when nine students were arrested in February 1961 and fined $75 or 30 days in jail. [6] On February 11, 1961, 14 students from Burke High School, Immaculate Conception High School, and Bonds-Wilson High School were charged with trespassing when they refused to leave the lunch counter at the Kress store on King Street. The NAACP paid the bonds for nine of the students; four younger protestors were released to their parents' custody. [7]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sit-in</span> Form of direct action

A sit-in or sit-down is a form of direct action that involves one or more people occupying an area for a protest, often to promote political, social, or economic change. The protestors gather conspicuously in a space or building, refusing to move unless their demands are met. The often clearly visible demonstrations are intended to spread awareness among the public, or disrupt the goings-on of the protested organisation. Lunch counter sit-ins were a nonviolent form of protest used to oppose segregation during the civil rights movement, and often provoked heckling and violence from those opposed to their message.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Greensboro sit-ins</span> 1960 nonviolent protests in the United States

The Greensboro sit-ins were a series of nonviolent protests in February to July 1960, primarily in the Woolworth store—now the International Civil Rights Center and Museum—in Greensboro, North Carolina, which led to the F. W. Woolworth Company department store chain removing its policy of racial segregation in the Southern United States. While not the first sit-in of the civil rights movement, the Greensboro sit-ins were an instrumental action, and also the best-known sit-ins of the civil rights movement. They are considered a catalyst to the subsequent sit-in movement, in which 70,000 people participated. This sit-in was a contributing factor in the formation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nashville sit-ins</span> Nonviolent protests against racial segregation in Tennessee (1960)

The Nashville sit-ins, which lasted from February 13 to May 10, 1960, were part of a protest to end racial segregation at lunch counters in downtown Nashville, Tennessee. The sit-in campaign, coordinated by the Nashville Student Movement and the Nashville Christian Leadership Council, was notable for its early success and its emphasis on disciplined nonviolence. It was part of a broader sit-in movement that spread across the southern United States in the wake of the Greensboro sit-ins in North Carolina.

The Friendship Nine, or Rock Hill Nine, was a group of African-American men who went to jail after staging a sit-in at a segregated McCrory's lunch counter in Rock Hill, South Carolina in 1961. The group gained nationwide attention because they followed the 1960 Nashville sit-ins strategy of "Jail, No Bail", which lessened the huge financial burden civil rights groups were facing as the sit-in movement spread across the South. They became known as the Friendship Nine because eight of the nine men were students at Rock Hill's Friendship Junior College.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clarence Harris</span>

Clarence Lee "Curly" Harris was the store manager at the F. W. Woolworth Company store in Greensboro, North Carolina, during the Greensboro sit-ins in 1960.

Barr v. City of Columbia, 378 U.S. 146 (1964), is a United States Supreme Court decision that reversed the breach of peace and criminal trespass convictions of five African Americans who were refused service at a lunch counter of a department store. The Court held that there was insufficient evidence to support the breach of peace convictions, and reversed the criminal trespass convictions for the reasons stated in another case that was decided that same day, Bouie v. City of Columbia, which held that the retroactive application of an expanded construction of a criminal statute was barred by due process of ex post facto laws.

Douglas E. Moore was a Methodist minister who organized the 1957 Royal Ice Cream Sit-in in Durham, North Carolina. Moore entered the ministry at a young age. After finding himself dissatisfied with what he perceived as a lack of action among his divinity peers, he decided to take a more activist course. Shortly after becoming a pastor in Durham, Moore decided to challenge the city's power structure via the Royal Ice Cream Sit-in, a protest in which he and several others sat down in the white section of an ice cream parlor and asked to be served. The sit-in failed to challenge segregation in the short run, and Moore's actions provoked a myriad of negative reactions from many white and African-American leaders, who considered his efforts far too radical. Nevertheless, Moore continued to press forward with his agenda of activism.

The Dockum Drug Store sit-in was one of the first organized lunch counter sit-ins for the purpose of integrating segregated establishments in the United States. The protest began on July 19, 1958 in downtown Wichita, Kansas, at a Dockum Drug Store, in which protesters would sit at the counter all day until the store closed, ignoring taunts from counter-protesters. The sit-in ended three weeks later when the owner relented and agreed to serve black patrons. Though it wasn't the first sit-in, it is notable for happening before the well known 1960 Greensboro sit-ins.

The Richmond 34 refers to a group of Virginia Union University students who participated in a nonviolent sit-in at the lunch counter of Thalhimers department store in downtown Richmond, Virginia. The event was one of many sit-ins to occur throughout the civil rights movement in the 1960s and was essential to helping desegregate the city of Richmond.

The Royal Ice Cream sit-in was a nonviolent protest in Durham, North Carolina, that led to a court case on the legality of segregated facilities. The demonstration took place on June 23, 1957 when a group of African American protesters, led by Reverend Douglas E. Moore, entered the Royal Ice Cream Parlor and sat in the section reserved for white patrons. When asked to move, the protesters refused and were arrested for trespassing. The case was appealed unsuccessfully to the County and State Superior Courts.

This is a timeline of the civil rights movement in the United States, a nonviolent mid-20th century freedom movement to gain legal equality and the enforcement of constitutional rights for people of color. The goals of the movement included securing equal protection under the law, ending legally institutionalized racial discrimination, and gaining equal access to public facilities, education reform, fair housing, and the ability to vote.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sit-in movement</span> American 1960s civil rights campaign

The sit-in movement, sit-in campaign, or student sit-in movement, was a wave of sit-ins that followed the Greensboro sit-ins on February 1, 1960, led by students at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical Institute (A&T). The sit-in movement employed the tactic of nonviolent direct action and was a pivotal event during the Civil Rights Movement.

Joseph Charles Jones was an American civil rights leader, attorney, co-founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and chairperson of the SNCC's direct action committee.

The Greenville Eight was a group of African American students, seven in high school and one in college, that successfully protested the segregated library system in Greenville, South Carolina in 1960. Among the eight was Jesse Jackson, a college freshman. As a result of the staged sit-in, the library system in the city integrated.

Prior to the civil rights movement in South Carolina, African Americans in the state had very few political rights. South Carolina briefly had a majority-black government during the Reconstruction era after the Civil War, but with the 1876 inauguration of Governor Wade Hampton III, a Democrat who supported the disenfranchisement of blacks, African Americans in South Carolina struggled to exercise their rights. Poll taxes, literacy tests, and intimidation kept African Americans from voting, and it was virtually impossible for someone to challenge the Democratic Party, which ran unopposed in most state elections for decades. By 1940, the voter registration provisions written into the 1895 constitution effectively limited African-American voters to 3,000—only 0.8 percent of those of voting age in the state.

The New Year's Day March in Greenville, South Carolina was a 1,000-man march that protested the segregated facilities at the Greenville Municipal Airport, now renamed the Greenville Downtown Airport. The march occurred after Richard Henry and Jackie Robinson were prohibited from using a white-only waiting room at the airport. The march was the first large-scale movement of the civil rights movement in South Carolina and Greenville. The march brought state-wide attention to segregation, and the case Henry v. Greenville Airport Commission (1961) ultimately required the airport's integration of its facilities.

The Atlanta sit-ins were a series of sit-ins that took place in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. Occurring during the sit-in movement of the larger civil rights movement, the sit-ins were organized by the Committee on Appeal for Human Rights, which consisted of students from the Atlanta University Center. The sit-ins were inspired by the Greensboro sit-ins, which had started a month earlier in Greensboro, North Carolina with the goal of desegregating the lunch counters in the city. The Atlanta protests lasted for almost a year before an agreement was made to desegregate the lunch counters in the city.

Peterson v. City of Greenville, 373 U.S., was a United States Supreme Court case that maintained the illegality of race-based segregation in public places. Ten African American student protesters were arrested and convicted in Greenville, South Carolina for attempting to purchase food at an S.H. Kress lunch counter. After the African American students arrived at the restaurant and sat at the lunch counter, the manager abruptly closed the store and instructed the protesters to leave. The manager and police argued that the protesters violated a state trespassing ordinance and were not arrested because of their race. While the Supreme Court of South Carolina maintained the students' guilt, the United States Supreme Court reversed the decision, citing that a "violation of the Fourteenth Amendment cannot be saved by attempting to separate the mental urges of the discriminators."

Reverend Cecil Augustus Ivory was a Presbyterian minister, disability rights activist and sit-in leader during the Civil rights movement.

The Savannah Protest Movement was an American campaign led by civil rights activists to bring an end to the system of racial segregation in Savannah, Georgia. The movement began in 1960 and ended in 1963.

References

  1. "24 Arrested Here In Demonstration". News and Courier. Charleston, South Carolina. April 9, 1960. p. 9.
  2. "Embarrassing Show". News and Courier. Charleston, South Carolina. April 4, 1960. p. A8.
  3. "Eleven Negroes Stage 'Sitdown' In Local Store". Evening Post. Charleston, South Carolina. July 25, 1960. p. A2.
  4. "Lunch Counter Sit-In Staged At Store Here". News and Courier. Charleston, South Carolina. July 27, 1960. p. A9.
  5. "Negro Youths Picket Local Variety Stores". News and Courier. Charleston, South Carolina. July 28, 1960. p. A5.
  6. "Nine Negros Sentences In Sit-In Case". News and Courier. Charleston, South Carolina. March 2, 1961. p. 11.
  7. "14 Negroes Stage Sit-In; 9 Post Bond". News and Courier. Charleston, South Carolina. February 12, 1961. p. A12.