![]() Kennedy and his campaign manager and brother, Robert Kennedy, helped secure King’s release. After being sentenced to four months of hard labor at Georgia State Prison at Reidsville, presidential hopeful John F. The students were later released, but King remained in jail while Georgia officials determined whether his sit-in arrest violated probation conditions King had received months earlier after driving with an out of state drivers license. King and about 300 students were arrested. In October 1960 Atlanta student leaders convinced King to participate in a sit-in at Rich’s, a local department store. The 120 students representing 12 southern states voted to establish a youth-centered organization without formal affiliation with any other civil rights group. In a statement prior to the opening of the conference, King emphasized the “need for some type of continuing organization” and expressed his belief that “the youth must take the freedom struggle into every community in the South” ( Papers 5:427). This meeting became the founding conference of SNCC. On 15–17 April, the leaders of the various sit-in campaigns gathered at a conference called by Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) executive director Ella Baker. NAACP leaders, for their part, gave public support to the sit-ins, although some privately questioned the usefulness of student-led civil disobedience. This quality has given it the extraordinary power and discipline which every thinking person observes” ( Papers 5:450).Īlthough many of the student sit-in protesters were affiliated with National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) youth groups, the new student movement offered an implicit challenge to the litigation strategy of the nation’s oldest civil rights group. King wrote: “The key significance of the student movement lies in the fact that from its inception, everywhere, it has combined direct action with non-violence. Although protesters were routinely heckled and beaten by segregationists and arrested by police, their determination was unyielding. Nonviolence was a central component of the student-led demonstrations however, many protesters were not met with peaceful responses from the public. The Nashville movement proved successful, and the students grew ever more confident in their ability to direct campaigns without adult leadership. Many of them, including John Lewis, Diane Nash, and Marion Barry, would later become leaders of the southern civil rights struggle. ![]() Vanderbilt University student James Lawson led workshops on Gandhian nonviolence that attracted a number of students from Nashville’s black colleges. The sustained student protests in Nashville, Tennessee, were particularly well organized. By the end of the month, sit-ins had taken place at more than 30 locations in 7 states, and by the end of April over 50,000 students had participated. The Greensboro protesters eventually agreed to the mayor’s request to halt protest activities while city officials sought “a just and honorable resolution,” but black students in other communities launched lunch counter protests of their own (Carson, 10). By day three of the campaign, the students formed the Student Executive Committee for Justice to coordinate protests. Although no confrontations occurred, the second sit-in attracted the local media. The following morning about two dozen students arrived at Woolworth’s and sat at the lunch counter. The four students remained seated for almost an hour until the store closed. When a waitress asked them to leave, they politely refused to their surprise, they were not arrested. The students-Joseph McNeil, Ezell Blair, Franklin McCain, and David Richmond-purchased several items in the store before sitting at the counter reserved for white customers. The sit-ins started on 1 February 1960, when four black students from North Carolina A & T College sat down at a Woolworth lunch counter in downtown Greensboro, North Carolina. Martin Luther King, Jr., described the student sit-ins as an “electrifying movement of Negro students shattered the placid surface of campuses and communities across the South,” and he expressed pride in the new activism for being “initiated, fed and sustained by students” ( Papers 5:447 368). The sit-in campaigns of 1960 and the ensuing creation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) demonstrated the potential strength of grassroots militancy and enabled a new generation of young people to gain confidence in their own leadership. Chapter 15: Atlanta Arrest and Presidential Politics.Chapter 8: The Violence of Desperate Men.Chapter 6: Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr. ![]() Major King Events Chronology: 1929-1968. ![]()
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