The sit-ins were very significant to the movement. They symbolized a change in the mood of African-American people. Up until then, we had accepted segregation — begrudgingly — but we had accepted it. We had spoken against it, we had made speeches, but no one had defied segregation. At long last after decades of acceptance, four freshman students at North Carolina A&T went into Woolworth and at the lunch counter they "sat-in." When told they would not be served, they refused to leave and this sparked a movement throughout the South. Black students in colleges throughout the South saw it on television they said "Hey man, look at what our brothers and sisters in Greensboro are doing. What's wrong with us? Why don't we go out and do the same thing?" And they went out, so it swept across the South like the proverbial wildfire, with students rejecting segregation. With their very bodies they obstructed the wheels of injustice.
In the North, in addition to sending people down to hold institutes of non-violent training ... we boycotted the variety stores, the so-called 5 and 10-cent stores, Woolworth, Kress, Grant and so on. We put picket signs in front of the stores in the North urging people not to patronize them. This was effective too, but it was sparked by the sit-ins. It was effective, because Woolworth, in their annual report to stockholders in 1962, said that the curve of profits had gone down. That does not mean that they had lost money, but it meant that the curve which had been upward, now went down. They gave as the number one reason the nationwide boycotts of their stores in support of the southern student sit-in movement.
That was great. The students sat in. Went to jail, came out, sat in again. Marched. Picketed. Sat in again. And went to jail again. They simply would not stop.
It meant to black people that segregation could be defeated. Segregation persisted only because we allowed it to persist. We obeyed segregation, we did not go to these stores that segregated the lunch counters and so forth. We were reminded of Thoreau's essay of "Civil Disobedience." In that essay Thoreau said "Most of all I must see to it that I do not lend myself to the evil which I condemn."
We had been condemning segregation verbally for a long time, but we had lent ourselves to it by not sitting in, by not trying to patronize those places that segregated.
In the North, in addition to sending people down to hold institutes of non-violent training ... we boycotted the variety stores, the so-called 5 and 10-cent stores, Woolworth, Kress, Grant and so on. We put picket signs in front of the stores in the North urging people not to patronize them. This was effective too, but it was sparked by the sit-ins. It was effective, because Woolworth, in their annual report to stockholders in 1962, said that the curve of profits had gone down. That does not mean that they had lost money, but it meant that the curve which had been upward, now went down. They gave as the number one reason the nationwide boycotts of their stores in support of the southern student sit-in movement.
That was great. The students sat in. Went to jail, came out, sat in again. Marched. Picketed. Sat in again. And went to jail again. They simply would not stop.
It meant to black people that segregation could be defeated. Segregation persisted only because we allowed it to persist. We obeyed segregation, we did not go to these stores that segregated the lunch counters and so forth. We were reminded of Thoreau's essay of "Civil Disobedience." In that essay Thoreau said "Most of all I must see to it that I do not lend myself to the evil which I condemn."
We had been condemning segregation verbally for a long time, but we had lent ourselves to it by not sitting in, by not trying to patronize those places that segregated.
http://www.sitins.com/story.shtml
Who is Thoreau?
ReplyDeleteI think it's interesting that they did this at sit ins and how they put up with all the stuff that was hurting them and stuff.
ReplyDelete