The Sit In Movement
No one participated in a sit in of this sort without seirousness of purpose. The instructions were simple sit quietly and wait to be served. And often the participants would be threatened by local customers.Sometimes they would have food ketchup poured on them.When it came to physical attack,student would curl up into a ball on the floor and take the punishment.Local police arrested the sit in demonstrators then another line of students would take the empty seats.
Sit in organizers believed that if the violence were only on the part of the white community, the world would see the righteousness of their policies of segregation.In April 1960, Martin Luther King Jr. sponsored a conference to discuss strategy.Students from the North and South came together and formed the student nonviolent coordinating committee "SNCC".The CONGRESS ON RACIAL EQUALITY (CORE) was a northern group of students that was led by JAMES FARMER, which endorsed direct action. These groups became the grassroots organizers of future sit-ins at lunch counters, wade-ins at segregated swimming pools, and pray-ins at white-only churches.
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