Civil Rights

• Four black students from the North Carolina Agriculture and Technology College in Greensboro, North Carolina, changed the face of civil rights protest

  1 February 1960
• The Greensboro sit-in


  1. Shopped at the Greensboro Woolworth's department store

  2. Sat at the lunch counter and waited to be served

  3. Staff refused to serve the students and asked them to leave

  4. The students remained until closing time
• 25 students arrived and sat at the lunch counter in shifts


  Next day
• Over 300 students working in shifts - black and white, male and female. The sit-in spread.

  4 February
• Young people in North Carolina read the local news and began to hold their own sit-ins. National news led to thousands taking part.
• CORE and the SCLC


  Organisations asked to send people to train students in nonviolent protest tactics
• Ella Baker, SCLC member, invited student groups to a meeting in Raleigh, North Carolina, to plan student protests across the South.


  15 April 1960
• Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)


  Set up with the aim of using non-violent protest to campaign for civil rights
• SNCC


  • Built on the non-violent principles developed by Martin Luther King
  • Trained students to cope with the hostility and harassment they faced during sit-ins and other demonstrations
• The Greensboro sit-in


  • Young people thought that segregated lunch counters were wrong
  • White southerners joined CORE and SNCC, despite threats
  • The sit-ins attracted significant numbers of protesters (about 50,000 by mid-April 1960)
  • Unlike boycotting, sit-ins were in public spaces that black people were not supposed to use
  • At first, the sit-ins were a largely student, largely black, protest. Then, other people, such as college professors, also took part
  • By the end of the year, the number of white people joining the protests meant the organisers could use mixed race groups in their protests
• Publicity for the Greensboro sit-in

  • Grew because the numbers of people involved rose rapidly
  • The coverage was mainly supportive
  • Favourable news coverage produced support from black and white people in both the North and South
  • There were demonstrations across the USA, at local branches of nationwide department stores that segregated their facilities
• CORE activists decided to ride buses from the North to the Deep South on 'Freedom Rides' to test desegregation


  1961
• Seven black and six white 'Freedom Riders' left Washington DC on two different buses

  4 May 1961
• John Patterson (Alabama's governor) spoke out against the Riders. Media accused the Riders of deliberately looking for trouble.
• The first bus reached Anniston, Alabama. Over 100 KKK members slashed the tyres and smashed the windows. A firebomb into the bus through a broken window and held the doors shut.


  15 May 1961
• The passengers escaped just before the petrol tank exploded. Some were beaten up as soon as they were off the bus.
• The Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) organised cars to take the Riders to Birmingham airport.
• Riders on the second bus were pulled off the bus and beaten up. They got back on the bus, which drove on to Birmingham.
• In Birmingham, the Riders were beaten up again. The Birmingham chief of police, 'Bull' Connor, told the police not to stop KKK members.
• Publicity made the federal government force Governor John Patterson to get them safely to Montgomery.
• The police escorted the bus to just outside Montgomery, then left.

  20 May
• KKK and WCC beat up the Riders and members of the press. The mob (over 1,000) roamed Montgomery, attacking black people and setting one boy on fire. The police arrested the Riders for starting a riot.
• Southern states developed a new tactic. On 24 May, a large police escort accompanied a bus containing Freedom Riders going from Montgomery to Jackson, Mississippi. However, when they arrived in Jackson and tried to use the facilities the Riders were arrested. The federal government did not stop the arrests.
• Over the summer, there were over 60 Freedom Rides. Over 300 Riders went to Jackson's segregated jail.
• The federal government said federal officers would enforce desegregation if states did not obey. The Southern States began to desegregate bus facilities and the Freedom Rides ended.


  1 November
• Between 1956 and 1962, some Southern universities desegregated without much trouble.
• 1961: East Carolina University took its first black student with little violence
• James Meredith re-applied to the University of Mississippi which had rejected him in May 1961.


  1962
• The NAACP challenged his rejection. Supreme Court ordered the university to admit him.
• Uni officials and Ross Barnett (the state's governor) disobeyed the ruling by physically stopping Meredith from re
• Meredith returned, accompanied by about 500 federal officials. 3,000 people many armed, attacked the officials.


  30 Sept
• President Kennedy spoke on television and radio, calling for calm. He was ignored. The mob chanted in favor against the federal government
• Fires were started and streetlights were shot out. 375 civilians were injured. Over 160 federal marshals w of them were shot. Kennedy sent in federal troops, who eventually stopped t rioting,
• Meredith registered. Troops guarded him for the whole year it took for him t graduate.


  1 October
• Federal government was pushed to act when:

  a. protesters kept on going (e.g. the Free Riders)

  b. tactics provoked racist violence (eg. in Birmingham) causing worldwide