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 organization. Lunch counter sit-ins were a nonviolent form of protest used to oppose segregation during the 1954–1968 civil rights movement in the United States, and often provoked heckling and violence from those opposed to their message."Sit-Ins." The Martin Luther King Jr., Research and Education Institute, June 27, 2020, https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/sit-ins
Tactics The tactics of a sit-in is usually to cause peaceful disruption. The strategy for sit in protests was pioneered by Mahatma Gandhi, during the Quit India Movement and Salt March, which involved peaceful resistance. Gandhi drew from the works of Leo Tolstoy. Although throughout history sit-ins existed as a form of protest, including prior to the Industrial Revolution. Sit ins cause the message of a protest movement to be spread, without causing any damage, as such they are a common form of civil disobedience.
Examples
United States
Civil rights movement
The Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) conducted sit-ins as early as the 1940s. Ernest Calloway refers to Bernice Fisher as "Godmother of the restaurant 'sit-in' technique.""Of Time and Sound, Requiem For A Free, Compassionate Spirit", by Ernest Galloway, published in Missouri Teamster, May 12, 1966, Page 7. In August 1939, African-American attorney Samuel Wilbert Tucker organized the Alexandria Library sit-in at the then racially segregated library. Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) labor delegates had a brief, spontaneous lunch counter sit-in during their 1947 Columbus, Ohio convention.(NYT March 17, 1947: 16)
In one of the earliest use of sit-ins against racism, followers of Father Divine and the International Peace Mission Movement joined with the Cafeteria Workers Union, Local 302, in September 1939 to protest racially unfair hiring practices at New York's Shack Sandwich Shops, Inc. According to The New York Times for September 23, 1939, on Thursday between 75 and 100 followers showed up at the restaurant at Forty-first Street and Lexington Avenue, where most of the strike activity has been concentrated, and groups went into the place, purchased five-cent cups of coffee, and conducted what might be described as a kind of customers' nickel sit down strike. Other patrons were unable to find seats.
In May 1942, James Farmer Jr., an organizer for the Fellowship of Reconciliation, led a group of 27 people to protest the racially discriminatory no-service policy of the Jack Spratt Diner on 47th Street in Chicago. Each seating area at the diner was taken by groups that included at least one black person. The peaceful patrons, several from the campus of the nearby University of Chicago, then tried to order; all were refused. The police were called, but when they arrived they told the management that no laws were being broken, so no arrests were made. The diner closed for the night but thereafter, according to periodic checks made by CORE activists, it no longer enforced its discriminatory policy.
With the encouragement of Melvin B. Tolson and Farmer, students from Wiley and Bishop Colleges organized the first sit-in in Texas in the rotunda of the Harrison County Courthouse in Marshall. This sit-in directly challenged the oldest White Citizens Party in Texas and would culminate in the reversal of Jim Crow laws in the state and the desegregation of postgraduate studies in Texas by the Sweatt v. Painter (1950) verdict. Sit-ins are often recognized for illuminating the goals of the movement in a way that young people were also able to participate in. Sit-ins were an integral part of the nonviolent strategy of civil disobedience and mass protests that eventually led to passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which ended legally sanctioned racial segregation in the United States and also passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that struck down many racially motivated barriers used to deny voting rights to non-whites.
1955 Baltimore, Maryland
One of the earliest lunch counter sit-ins of the Civil Rights Movement was started by a group of Morgan State College (now University) students and the Baltimore chapter of CORE. Their goal was to desegregate Read's drug stores. The peaceful impromptu sit-in lasted less than one half an hour and the students were not served. They left voluntarily and no one was arrested. After losing business from the sit-in and several local protests, two days later the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper ran a story featuring Arthur Nattans Sr., then President of Read's, who was quoted saying, "We will serve all customers throughout our entire stores, including the fountains, and this becomes effective immediately". As a result, 37 Baltimore-area lunch counters became desegregated. Despite also being led by students and successfully targeting segregation at a store lunch counter, the Read's Drug Store sit-in did not garner the same level of attention as the 1960 Greensboro sit-ins.
1957 Durham, North Carolina
At another early sit-in, the "Royal Seven," a group of three women and four men from Durham, North Carolina, sat in at the Royal Ice Cream Parlor on June 23, 1957, to protest practices of segregation.Royal Ice Cream Sit-in — Durham, NC ~ Civil Rights Movement Archive The activists were arrested and charged with trespassing. Their efforts are now recognized via historical markers in Durham. They went to court three times; each case ended in their being found guilty.
1958 Wichita and Oklahoma City
This sit-in for the purpose of integrating segregated establishments began on July 19, 1958, in Wichita, Kansas, at Dockum Drugs, a store in the old Rexall chain.Eckels, Carla. "Kansas Sit-In Gets Its Due at Last", National Public Radio, October 21, 2006. Accessed September 15, 2010. In early August, the drugstore became integrated, then remainder of Dockum stores in all of Kansas. A few weeks later on August 19, 1958, in Oklahoma City, a nationally recognized sit-in at the Katz Drug Store lunch counter occurred. The Oklahoma City Sit-in Movement was led by NAACP Youth Council leader Clara Luper, a local high school teacher, and young local students, including Luper's eight-year-old daughter, who suggested the sit-in be held. The group quickly desegregated the Katz Drug Store lunch counters. It took several more years, but she and the students, using the tactic, integrated all of Oklahoma City's eating establishments. Today, in downtown Wichita, Kansas, a statue depicting a waitress at a counter serving people honors this pioneering sit-in. Despite the notable attention that has historically been given to the 1960 Greensboro sit-in, the 1958 Katz Drug Store sit-in in fact employed the same strategy that would be used in Greensboro one-and-a-half years later.
1960 Greensboro and Nashville
Following the Oklahoma City sit-ins, the tactic of non-violent student sit-ins spread. The Greensboro sit-ins at a Woolworth's in Greensboro, North Carolina, on February 1, 1960, launched a wave of anti-segregation sit-ins across the South and opened a national awareness of the depth of segregation in the nation.First Southern Sit-in, Greensboro NC ~ Civil Rights Movement Archive Within weeks, sit-in campaigns had begun in nearly a dozen cities, primarily targeting Woolworth's and S. H. Kress and other stores of other national chains.Sit-ins Spread Across the South ~ Civil Rights Movement Archive
The largest and best-organized of these campaigns were the Nashville sit-ins, whose groundwork was already underway before the Greensboro events. They involved hundreds of participants, and led to the successful desegregation of Nashville lunch counters.Nashville Student Movement ~ Civil Rights Movement Archive Most of the participants in the Nashville sit-ins were college students, and many, such as Diane Nash, James Bevel, Bernard Lafayette, and C. T. Vivian, went on to lead, strategize, and direct almost every aspect of the 1960s civil rights movement. The students of the historically black colleges and universities in the city played a critical role in implementing the Nashville sit-ins.
1963 Flagstaff Arizona
The NAACP recruited 10 high school and middle school students from Flagstaff Junior High School and Flagstaff High School to protest the refusal of the El Charro Cafe to serve a bus load of Negro tourists from New Jersey. Shirley Sims, a 14-year-old member of the NAACP Youth Corp at Flagstaff Junior High School, accepted the invitation to participate in a nonviolent sit-in demonstration. Each of the youth members were given $5 with the instructions to go inside and sit down. If they were able to order a meal they would pay for it, if not they would sit there. Reportedly, none of the members were served. Joseph Watkins, an official of the Arizona Branch of the NAACP, reported to the Flagstaff City Council that none of the youths had been served and that there had been no violence. Watkins also stated that unless the restaurant had a change in policy, more sit ins would be staged, "but whatever methods we employ or encourage will be peaceful." Sims stated in an Arizona Daily Sun article in 2017 that, "it wasn't scary because a lot of the people who frequented that restaurant were our teachers, and they encouraged us."
1961 Rock Hill, South Carolina