SNCC’s Baptism by Fire: Tracing the First Thirteen Days of the 1960 Sit-In Movement by Leo Goldman
The Civil Rights Movement in the United States is often taught from the top-down. In 1954, “separate but equal” was overturned by Brown v. Board of Education. From 1955-56 the Montgomery Bus Boycott led to mass mobilization and desegregation. In 1957, the first Civil Rights Act was passed. But this history ignores the underpinnings of the movement—actions taken by ordinary people to organize and bring about change.
Underneath larger organizations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), MLK’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and even more decentralized organizations such as Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), lies a history of ordinary people joining local movements to fight injustice. Students, especially from the South, are a particular example of such organic development. Their radical energy for change propelled into one of the most crucial but overlooked organizations in the 1960s: the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC.
SNCC was not just an organization which focused on national issues. Connecting to larger issues of colonialism across the seas, SNCC students engaged in globally-minded direct action, distributed propaganda and literature for anti-imperial and anti-colonial rhetoric, and developed detailed ideological positions on international issues.[1] [2] SNCC’s network reached beyond a domestic sphere and looked toward larger decolonization movements for inspiration.
SNCC’s story is one of young radicals taking principles of non-violence and putting their bodies, lives, and souls on the line for justice. This begs the question: How did SNCC grow the vitality and discipline to engage in the often grueling and dangerous forms of protest and civil organizing? From where did SNCC emerge? How did so many students become so influential in the movement?
Part One: The Leaders
SNCC’s history typically starts with the SCLC. So the story goes: In in April 1960, Ella Baker, who was working as interim executive director of the SCLC, suggested the idea that the student leaders across the South should convene.[3] The SCLC allocated $800 (now ~$8,700) to a youth leadership conference in Raleigh, known later as the Shaw Conference.[4] In a joint call by Baker and MLK, 126 delegates were invited from Alabama, the District of Colombia, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Mississippi, Virginia, and Tennessee (where five delegates were invited but 17 came).[5] [6] [7] Over 200 students ended up attending the Shaw Conference, including from the north. SNCC came out of the Shaw Conference, establishing a network of student activists across the South.
Baker wanted to support the burgeoning activists, but did not want the SCLC to “capture” the student movement.[8] In an address to the students published by The Southern Patriot, Baker said, “It is important to keep the movement democratic and to avoid struggles for personal leadership… Here is an opportunity for adult and youth to work together and provide genuine leadership.”[9] Rather than be absorbed by the SCLC, the students chose to follow Baker’s opinion and develop a temporary body called the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to keep in touch. From then, SNCC was born.[10]
As an organization, SNCC’s capacities grew out of black youth. These young people went on to sustain the 1961 Freedom Rides after they had faltered, organize communities in the 1962 voter registration campaigns, and push for political liberation in the 1964 Freedom Summer Project. SNCC’s activities were characterized by its direct actions undertaken by the youth leadership and organizers, putting themselves in harm’s way and subjecting themselves to severe brutality and torture. SNCC’s power came from a youth fervor which was often ideologically disparate—led primarily by an internally contested ideology of nonviolence, a goal to develop black political power, and a belief in the abolition of what Wesley Hogan describes as a caste system, but may as well be akin to an apartheid regime of segregation in the southern United States. The youth fervor was directed by adult veterans who took care of the legal and bureaucratic parts of the organization.
Getting to the Shaw conference and ultimately SNCC from independent student organizations, however, did not come easily. Before the establishment of SNCC, the student organizations across the South had already begun an extraordinarily widespread campaign of sit-ins in 1960 which drew at least 50,000 participants within a year.[11] Scholars have debated the origins of the sit-in surge—from where it originated, how it spread, and who contributed most to its development—as the sit-ins led to a rapid mobilization of southern folks and catapulted SNCC into existence. Some have suggested that organizations like the NAACP, SCLC, and CORE played a crucial role organizing the sit-ins, whereas other research has argued that the sit-ins originated from grassroots student groups.[12] While it is true that many of the groups had connections to the SCLC, NAACP, and CORE leadership, the sit-ins were led commonly by students, and the movement as a whole was not entirely premeditated.[13]
The fact that at least some sit-ins occurred was most likely inevitable. On February 1st, 1960, the first sit-in began with four members of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical (A&T) in Greensboro North Carolina.[14] Traditionally, the story continues that improvised sit-ins had rapidly expanded from there—however, leaders of the NCLC and students in Nashville had already been planning a sit-in months before.[15] So were students at Bennett College for Women (BCW), an adjacent college to A&T with a strong history of civil rights activism. BCW students who were members of their college’s NAACP chapter had been planning a sit-in within downtown Greensboro since 1959.[16] The planning that students at BCW had devised eventually made it to the A&T four by late Fall, possibly through mutual connections between the colleges or inspiration from former protests.[17] Although the four carried out the sit-in independently, the women joined the A&T protesters after the first two days.[18]
Most history of SNCC focuses on the early Nashville Sit-Ins. The Nashville Sit-Ins, rightfully so, contained some of the most influential members of SNCC’s later organizing. Some of these names included James M Lawson Jr, a minister at Nashville’s First Baptist and likely the most crucial leader of the nonviolent strategy; Kelly Miller Smith, a preacher who founded the Nashville Christian Leadership Council (NCLC); Diane Nash, a white student who became a deeply respected leader in SNCC; and others like John Lewis, Bernard Lafayette, James “Jim” Bevel, Charles McDew, and more. These students and adults were all part of the NCLC, which at the time had become a highly organized and disciplined organization. Lawson had inspired them through his knowledge of Gandhi and nonviolent direct action, and the group often used the “workshop” technique for training, developing themselves into a cohesive and well-studied team.[19] The “workshop” technique later became commonly used in SNCC organizing.
When the Nashville sit-in began on February 13th, the NCLC had become a formidable organization. They had already engaged in some sit-ins before, such as in November of 1959, but mostly for community building and engaging with local issues.[20] Their training through the “workshop” strategy had meant that they were able to quickly mobilize the influx of new and interested people willing to engage in the sit-in action. Their sit-ins were able to overwhelm local shops and police, and they also successfully carried out a boycott in April. After an attack on a black councilman’s home resulted in even more people joining the sit ins, the NCLC organized a city hall march wherein Diane Nash confronted the mayor and forced him to concede.[21] The NCLC had won desegregation.
The Nashville Sit-Ins, admittedly, were crucial to the part that the NCLC leaders played later in the Shaw Conference and in SNCC as a whole. Their level of organization and success earned them respect by other students, and likely was an important factor toward their sustained growth.[22] However, they would only be an individual and localized moment of success without the larger spread of sit-ins across the South. In fact, the Nashville Sit-Ins may not have happened at all without the earlier movement: the NCLC had actually been lagging behind on their planning, and the Greensboro Sit-Ins spurred them back into action. Lawson had received a call from the Greensboro activists asking the Nashville group to join them, which kicked them into mobilization.[23]
What, then, started the movement in Greensboro? Further, how did the movement spread beyond a localized event? The sit-ins before Nashville carry their own character, different from the levels of organization and cohesion which the NCLC brought to their actions (and eventually to SNCC). Instead, the earlier sit-ins represent a diffuse network of organizations, groups of friends, and individuals across what was mostly North Carolina, inspired by separate but similar ideologies and connected through a myriad of different forms of communication. The earlier sit-ins did contain organizing structures, but they represented a federated style which led to the pattern of mobilization first, organization after. This way, the early sit-ins were able to adapt to each of their own specific conditions and lead to a snowball effect of cascading towns engaging in direct action.
Part Two: Precursors
Before looking at the first sit-in in Greensboro, it is important to note that the Greensboro sit-in likely should not be considered the colloquial “first.” As many as 15 sit-ins had been organized between the years 1957 and 1960, often organized by CORE activists and NAACP Youth Councils.[24] Clara Luper, an NAACP organizer for a sit-in in 1958, describes the sit in she organized in a very similar way to the origins of Greensboro, which clearly signifies a link between the earlier sit-ins and the so-called “first”.[25] Similar origins can be found in other pre-Greensboro sit-ins such as in Wichita and Tulsa.[26] Why these sit-ins did not instigate a nation-wide wave is likely due to their isolated nature. The sit-ins before Greensboro did not have what Greensboro had: already existing plans for a separate sit-in in a neighboring town and a powerful battery of students already ready to mobilize. This is not to say that earlier sit-ins were ineffective—some achieved their demands and set those who engaged to engage or lead other actions.[27] In addition, these already-existing histories of direct action set the stage for a culture of civil disobedience.
It would also be a complete misrepresentation to claim that the first sit-in, or most of the early sit-ins, were completely disconnected from already existing organizing networks. Nashville itself was not necessarily distinctly separated from these same networks.[28] However, Nashville’s NCLC clearly maintained a divergence as the most directly and openly engaged with their respective sit-in, as well as clearly holding an already existing planned and implemented organizational structure.[29] The NAACP, CORE, and the SCLC all had local leaders and groups from which much of the early organizing had at least passed through, but leaders and organizations were often not open about their collaboration and did not implement specific organizational practices and routines, as did the NCLC. Organizational structure was limited to adult leaders positioning themselves as advisors and catalysts for sit-ins.
The Greensboro Four themselves had some connections to the NAACP. Although none of them were members at the time of the sit-in, all four had been members of local NAACP Youth Councils at some point.[30] An attorney named Floyd McKissick, who was the youth advisor of the state NAACP in North Carolina and the head of the NAACP Youth Council in Durham, knew the students well. McKissick had been the leader of the chapter during the earlier 1957 Durham sit-in called “The Royal Ice Cream sit-in”, which had led to a court case but was dismissed. McKissick knew that the four understood the history of sit-ins at Durham.[31] The head of the Greensboro NAACP Youth Council, Dr. George Simkins Jr, also knew the boys. After learning about how previous sit-in efforts by CORE had been successful in Baltimore, he had asked the national NAACP for support in some potential direct action but was turned away.[32] Unfortunately, the national NAACP office viewed direct action unfavorably. Because the NAACP national office was unwilling, Simkins encouraged the Greensboro Four to consider direct action tactics for desegregation.
The four had been frustrated with the conditions of segregation on their own. Politically, they were inspired by intellectuals and practitioners of nonviolence. Jibreel Khazan, a member of the four, had found inspiration for activism in both MLK’s speeches and a documentary about Gandhi’s “passive insistence.”[33] But the four were not politically isolated. They had a record of attending meetings at socially-aware churches, such as the meetings at Ashbury Temple hosted by Reverend Douglass Moore. Moore was a radical, who had been part of leftist divinity groups in his university. He was more interested, however, in direct action.[34] During the Royal Ice Cream Sit-in, Moore led the group.[35] McKissick met Moore when he asked McKissick to represent the group in court.[36] Moore also was become a board member of MLK’s SCLC, and had connections to other socially-active churches in the region and beyond.[37] He knew MLK and had written to him, congratulating the success of the Montgomery Bus Boycotts.
It is important to re-iterate the state of local NAACP chapters versus the national office. Before the sit-ins became a legitimate force, the national NAACP was wary of the direct action strategy and looked toward litigation instead.[38] Many of the sit-ins believed that the NAACP’s reliance on the court and litigation to create change was stifling the movement. Lawson remarked, “This movement is not only against segregation. It’s against Uncle Tom Negroes, against the NAACP’s over-reliance on the courts; and against the futile middle class technique of sending letters to the centers of power.”[39] Local NAACP chapters acted far differently than the national policy; chapter leaders were often far more radical and grassroots-driven. McKissick and Moore were both examples of these types of leaders, as well as other radical leaders like Daisy Bates, Ronald Walters, Hosea Williams, Barbara Posey, and Clara Luper.[40]
The Greensboro Four along with Moore and McKissick were also not, in any way, alone. Nearby at BCW in Greensboro, the Bennett women and their president, Willa Player, had cultivated customs of social activism on campus. Player acted as an important asset to Bennett students, often encouraging them to engage in activism as well as bringing leaders such as MLK, Thurgood Marshall, and Benjamin Mays to speak at the college.[41] Bennett women had been active in the Greensboro NAACP chapter up to the sit-in and held leadership roles.[42] Player continued to push the women in Bennett when they participated in the Greensboro sit-in, encouraging them and offering them support.[43] Bennett College was undoubtedly an irreplaceable asset for mobilization throughout the development of the sit in.[44]
Part Three: The First Sit-In, and then the Second, and then the Third…
On Feburary 1st, the four students decided to commit to the sit-in.[45] That day, the four walked into a store called Woolworth’s and bought toothpaste. After leaving the store, they walked to the Woolworth’s segregated lunch counter and requested coffee, but were asked to leave. They refused to. When McKissick and Moore heard about the sit-in, they were surprised and elated. McKissick exclaimed, “Oh my god, these kids have jumped the gun!”[46] They had been planning a sit-in in Durham, because they believed that Durham was an easy city to achieve integration.[47] With the NAACP unlikely to offer legal support, Floyd McKissick volunteered day-of to be legal counsel for the four.[48] Youth from neighboring towns also caught wind of the protest early. Charles Jones heard about the sit-in from a news report on his way back to Charlotte.[49] Callis Brown, a North Carolina College (NCC) student who later participated in the Durham sit-in, saw the sit-in on his television and reached out to some of his friends asking if they would participate in a similar sit-in at a Durham Woolworth’s.[50] When Carl Wesley Matthews, a resident of neighboring Winston-Salem, heard about the sit-in, he thought, “they’ve done something that I’ve wanted to do all my life but didn’t have the nerve to do.”[51]
The next day, the Greensboro four sat at the same lunch counter, this time aided by several fellow students from A&T and women from an unknown school.[52] [53] Reporters caught wind of the protest and published a headline.[54] After the store closed again, students participating in the sit-in formed a group titled the Student Executive Committee for Justice, or SECJ. The SECJ was chaired by BCW student Gloria Brown and A&T student Ernest Pitt.[55] Students planned to take turns sitting at the counter, planning to maintain the sit-in. Students from BCW (dubbed the ‘Bennett Belles’) were important players in the organizing process.[56] They joined early and were immediately involved in serving various roles, such as witnesses or purchasers.[57] The SECJ reached out to Simkins for support, but Simkins instead referred to CORE worker Gordon Carey, who said he would have CORE assist with the protest. The students later refused the help on the basis that they wanted it to remain a student-centered movement.[58] College officials then joined a meeting held between the students and the Woolworth’s store. The meeting did not resolve the sit-ins.[59]
The sit-in developed extremely quickly in the days after, from four to“fifteen, and the third day it was probably a hundred and fifty, and then it probably mushroomed up to a thousand or so, and then it spread to another city,” said Joe McNeil, a member of the four.[60] The numbers are contested, but at least 80 people sat-in on the third day, and at least 300 on the fourth. The sit-ins had also spread to a nearby counter of a different store.[61] Counter-protesters also grew, beginning to arrive on the third day. The sit-in developed an air of tension. McKissick and Morris were invited by Simkins to meet with the students. There they trained students in nonviolence and coordinated with them to spread the sit-in to other cities.[62]
On the night of February 6th, after a bomb threat was called into Woolworth’s, the students called a two-week truce. The same day, 200 NCC students held a meeting with the NAACP student leader Lacy Streeter, Callis Brown, and the student government president on coordinating a sit-in at Durham.[63] By then, newspapers had published multiple stories about the sit-in. News had reached far beyond North Carolina, and civic-minded students were paying attention. Louis Austin, a publisher who was a friend of McKissick and Moore, published an editorial on the 6th in the Carolina Times which encouraged the sit-in.[64] McKissck, Moore, and Simpkins had also been attempting to spread the sit-ins to other cities. Simpkins had reached out to Reverend Benjamin Elton Cox of High Point, N.C. and other leaders in the South encouraging them to stage their own sit-ins. Moore had already reached out to Reverend Lawson in Nashville, TN informing them of the sit-in. Lawson immediately mobilized the NCLC.[65] Youth from Durham also spread the word: NCC students contacted peers in Raleigh and asked them to stage their own and to spread the word about the sit-ins.[66]
On February 7th, Carey and fellow CORE worker Jim McCain arrived in Durham to meet Simkins and was introduced to McKissick.[67] Carey ended up involved in the ongoing planning to start a sit-in in Durham.[68] He hosted workshops for the students to train in nonviolent tactics, so that protesters could handle potential counter-protesters who might attack them.[69] The next day, February 8th, a total of 20 students from North Carolina College, including three white Duke students and Carey himself, mobilized a sit-in at Durham’s Woolworth’s.[70] The owner of the Woolworth’s claimed that a bomb threat had been called it and closed the store, so the protesters moved on to a Kress building.[71] Carey and a white student were arrested, and McKissick went to help them.
The Durham sit-ins were prompted by the efforts of McKissick and Moore. But it was students who urged the movement in Durham forward before 1960. Durham already had a history of organized resistance: by 1958, the work of NAACP youth, primarily women, had brought a petition of over 200 families to challenge segregated schooling in Durham, along with a legal suit.[72] The suit was stalled, but in May, Evelyn McKissick (wife of Floyd McKissick) and Rachel Richardson filed a suit to desegregate their daughters, which was successful.[73] Then, in 1959, NAACP youth began to push for direct action against the complacency of the adults. They spoke in a NAACP state meeting about the possibility of “sit-down strikes in eating places such as bus and train stations and dime stores.”[74] Resentment of the conditions in Durham became popular points of discussion. In the NCC Campus Echo, a student asked, “How long can we patronize segregated movie houses and eating places and yet hope to escape from complete and eternal Jim Crowism?”[75] Planning for sit-ins had already begun under Morris and McKissick. Greensboro’s publicity prompted the already-existing sentiment to coalesce into quicker action.
Two other cities saw sit-in action on the 8th. In Fayetteville, a dozen students mostly from Fayetteville State sat-in at McCrory’s and Woolworth’s, but only for a few minutes.[76] It would be two days later when students “descended on Woolworth’s by twos and threes and quietly waited until they were able to occupy the seats at the counters.”[77] In Winston-Salem, Carl Wesley Matthews walked alone into a Kress store counter.[78] The next day, a group of students from Winston-Salem Teachers College (WSTC, now WSSU) joined Matthews.[79] On that day (the 9th), over in Charlotte, another sit-in began.
Winston-Salem’s sit-in on the 8th and 9th was just a glimpse of what was to come. According to Donald Bradley, a protester and a representative of the college NAACP chapter at WSTC, Matthew’s sit-in was a “test case” for a larger movement in Winston-Salem.[80] Carl Wesley Matthews mentored students from the WSTC NAACP chapter and began his sit in publicly on his own.[81] But the sit-in idea had been discussed. A call, potentially coming from the Greensboro or Durham movements, was received on the 3rd , prompting talks of a sit-in at the Winston-Salem Woolworth’s.[82] Much later, on the 23rd, a sit-in was orchestrated along with 10 white students from Wake Forest University. The protests were organized by the WSTC NAACP and the city NAACP chapters, although the students chose to avoid publicly attributing the NAACP to the sit-in.[83]
Charlotte, on the other hand, did not have the same direct intervention by older folks. Charles Jones, who heard about the Greensboro protests they day they began, was not connected to either McKissick or Moore, nor was he a member of an NAACP chapter. After learning about Greensboro, he talked with some of his friends about a sit-in in Charlotte.[84] At a council meeting on February 8th with around 650 students at Johnson C. Smith Theological Seminary (JCSTS), Jones and his friends led a discussion on the idea of a sit-in. Jones said he was going to do it, and that anyone who wanted to should join him. To his surprise, the next day, over 200 students joined him to a sit-in at eight different lunch counters in downtown Charlotte.[85] How Charlotte was able to amass over 200 students in under a day is not well explained: there was no early involvement from NAACP chapters, nor with black church connections. The closest connection to an already-existing activist network was one of Jones’s friends, whose father led a movement which started a desegregation case in Clarendon County.[86]
A similar situation developed in Fayetteville. NAACP, CORE, or any adult influence does not seem evident.[87] On February 6th, the Fayetteville Observer published an article about the Greensboro sit-ins. This would have been the first article in the local news of Fayetteville that recognized the sit-ins.[88] Both Fayetteville and Winston-Salem had been relatively stagnant in terms of student civil rights protests, and a documented history of organizing in Fayetteville before the sit-in began is difficult to find. However, according to oral testimony, there were a few student leaders of the protest who organized the first sit-in through mass meetings. One of those students was Harvey Daye, who organized students through “egalitarian means” and personal power. A mass meeting was held in Cook Dining Hall before the sit-in for organizing.[89] When the sit-in began on the 10th, the students refrained from defining a specific leader so as to avoid being targeted by reactionaries.
Also on the 10th began the sit-in in Raleigh (which later became the city to host the Shaw Conference). According to Francena Turner, “Raleigh’s protests actually grew out of a Shaw University NAACP chapter meeting discussion that later extended to the student body at large.”[90] David Forbes, a student leader who was later involved in SNCC, recalls the protests stemming from Greensboro. He comments, “The day after A&T appeared in the newspaper, we started our mass meetings and discussions. We had a big meeting in Greenleaf Auditorium at Shaw’s campus. It was full. Four or five hundred students.”[91] The sit-in ended up occurring in neighboring Cameron Village, where there was a Woolworth’s. When the protesters were interviewed, they claimed they had planned just the day before, when in fact they had been organizing before then.[92]
Part Four: Expansions and Reflections
At this point, there were six total cities in North Carolina which had began protests. By the end of the month of February, there would be 15 total cities. But what brought the movement from an exploding local uprising to a national one was the spread to other states, bringing in even more powerful movement leadership and organized groups. Sit-ins spread to South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Tennessee, Florida, Kentucky, and Alabama—in total, around 38 demonstrations started by the end of February. The demonstrations included sit-ins and picketing, calling for desegregation and using tactics of nonviolence.[93] Many of them focused on Woolworth stores. The first protest to start in another state was in Hampton, Virginia, on the 11th. On the 12th sit-ins started in Rock Hill, South Carolina, and on the 13th in Nashville, Tennessee and Tallahassee, Florida. Sit-ins continued to spread locally in North Carolina: in High Point and Elizabeth city on the 11th, and in Rock Hill and Concord on the 12th.
As news of the sit-ins spread, students from other colleges began to explode in demonstrations across the South. Upwards of 30 demonstrations had been started started by the end February, mostly sit-ins, calling for desegregation and using tactics of nonviolence.[94] Many of them focused on Woolworth stores. North Carolina had the most protests, with 15 across the state. The following month, at least 45 new cities had started protests, and the number of demonstrators ballooned.[95]
The strength of the movement was remarkable. Its growth from just a few days into other cities and its sustained effort which continued beyond 1960 won concessions from city officials across states. Once the protests had hit a critical mass, the question for students in cities across the South was not if they should begin a sit-in, but rather, why haven’t they? “We were obligated to do it,” Charles Jones, who organized sit-ins against a Woolworth in Charlotte N.C. explained. “The movement had caught fire.”[96]
The characteristics of the movement are debated by academics. The movement likely grew through publicity; newspapers like the Atlanta Daily World and television broadcasts of the Greensboro sit-ins exposed people to the movement, and people became inspired to organize sit-ins on their own campus.[97] Interpersonal connections between colleges have a debated effect: some academics note their anecdotal impact whereas others find them statistically insignificant. People were seemingly inspired by their neighboring cities—as sit-ins spread, especially within a state, more cities were likely to join.[98] Most of the protests occurred outside of the Deep South, or away from where there was severe repression.[99] It is also also generally agreed that the organizing by CORE chapters had an impact on the chance and sustainability of sit-ins.[100] SCLC and NAACP involvement is debated, but it seems demonstrably clear that involvement of local radical offshoots can be confirmed. SCLC connections also seemed to make an impact in the early moments of the sit-ins.
In Many Minds, One Heart, Wesley Hogan remarks, “In an orderly and logical world, the great wave of student sit-ins that washed across the South early in 1960 should have flowed outward from Nashville.”[101] Perhaps this is the perspective that a focus on Nashville might take, given Nashville’s influence. But this perspective seems to leave out the vast network of organizing that Nashville itself was a part of, as well as the very character of the sit-ins as a movement. Organizers across boundaries who were interested in direct action had formed a diffuse but interconnected web of student groups, many of whom were not passive members of their movements, but pushed and further radicalized the movement. The movement was not the result of a highly-developed and centralized organizations.
It is certainly true that, as Morris writes, “Rational planning was evident in this early wave of sit-ins,”[102] as planning and organization occurred before and beyond even Greensboro. However, what made the early sit-ins of Greensboro and beyond unique was their ability to mass-mobilize large groups of radical students to undertake dangerous and boundary-breaking direct action. It is clear that organizational structure had not yet been developed to the same degree that it had in Nashville, instead adopting a mobilization first, organization after pattern. This allowed students, although mentored by adults often in local NAACP leadership positions, to rise to into leadership roles themselves. Some protests were even entirely organized by the pure mass-mobilization of students, with no NAACP involvement. Such a phenomenon speaks to the degree of agency that students held in the protests. Attributing the movement to just some NAACP Youth Council leaders would ignore this reality.
The nature of the early sit-ins reflect a broader character of SNCC. Just as the mass-mobilization of early sit-ins led to organization and a snowball effect, SNCC itself came from the mass-mobilization of students from around the South. Adult leaders acted as conduits, no doubt. And the characteristics of students engaging in taboo-breaking, difficult, and dangerous work continued within SNCC for the entirety of its existence and beyond. To truly grasp SNCC, it is impossible to ignore the early sit-ins.
This is perhaps an odd analogy, but reflecting on SNCC’s legacy is almost similar to watching an ant colony. Individually each ant may mean little, and yet, each ant depends on the ant next to them to make up the colony itself. It is easy to look just at the broader movements, or just to focus strictly on one ant. But it is difficult to not get lost when attempting to track how each ant interacts with the other, and then the other, in a cascading chain of cause and effect until it becomes clear how the colony mobilized. Hopefully this tracing, albeit just a small glimpse of the early mobilization of the 1960 Sit-In Movement, can provide a further look into the early movement and its connection to SNCC’s foundations. There is a vast and relatively unknown history of each ant in the chain of ants which made up the sit-ins, and further research should absolutely be conducted on the months after the first thirteen days. With this history, we can remember the courageous and dedicated lives that thousands of black students lived during the 60s, and more accurately reflect not just the 1960 Sit-In Movement, but the character of SNCC itself. To future students who continue the history of resistance and beyond, perhaps this history can be a form of inspiration. It does not take an entire organization to start a movement, but it does take people who are brave and willing to commit to justice.
“We must urge you to fight now to be the leaders of today, not tomorrow. We’ve got to be the leaders of today.” – Kwame Ture, SNCC organizer and civil rights leader, 1966
Bibliography
Andrews, Kenneth T, and Michael Biggs. 2006. “The Dynamics of Protest Diffusion: Movement Organizations, Social Networks, and News Media in the 1960 SitIns.” American Sociological Review 71 (5): 752–77. https://doi.org/10.2307/25472426.
Baker, Ella. 1960. “More than a Hamburger.” https://anotherworldarchives.org/ella-baker/hamburger.
Brown, Laura Michael. 2018. “Bennett College Women and the 1960 Greensboro Student SitIns.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 48 (1): 49–70. https://doi.org/10.2307/48544085.
Bynum, Thomas L. 2013. NAACP Youth and the Fight for Black Freedom, 1936–1965. University of Tennessee Press EBooks. https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.25291738.
Carey, Gordon. 1985. Interview with Gordon Carey Interview by Judith Vecchione. Washington University in St. Louis Blackside, Inc. http://repository.wustl.edu/concern/videos/st74cs44f.
Carey, Gordon. 2017. Interview with Gordon Carey, 1 of 3 Interview by Stanley Nelson. https://video.alexanderstreet.com/watch/interview-with-gordon-carey-1-of-3/transcript/sit%20in.
Civil Rights Movement Archive. 2025. “Civil Rights Movement Archive — Timeline and History from the Viewpoint of Those Who Were Part of It.” Www.crmvet.org. 2025. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhome.htm.
cmhpf. 2012. “Interview of Charles Jones.” YouTube. March 19, 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7H4A_i4D0Q.
Dalton, Mary, dir. 2016. I Am Not My Brother’s Keeper.
Gershenhorn, Jerry. 2018. Louis Austin and the Carolina Times. https://muse.jhu.edu/book/57760/.
Greene, Christina. 2006. Our Separate Ways. Univ of North Carolina Press.
Grundy, Pamela. 2017. Color and Character: West Charlotte High and the American Struggle over Educational Equality. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.
Hampton, Henry, Steve Fayer, and Sarah Flynn. 1991. Voices of Freedom : An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement from the 1950’S through the 1980’S. New York ; London: Bantam.
Hogan, Wesley C. 2007. Many Minds, One Heart: SNCC’s Dream for a New America. Chapel Hill: University Of North Carolina Press.
King, Martin Luther, and Ella Baker. 1960. “Youth Leadership Meeting, Shaw University, Raleigh N.C.” https://www.crmvet.org/docs/6004_sncc_call.pdf.
Linda Beatrice Brown. 2013. Belles of Liberty. Women and Wisdom Foundation Incorporated.
Luper, Clara. 2023. Behold the Walls. University of Oklahoma Press.
McDermott, Nancie. 2025. “Sitting down for a Cup of Coffee and Civil Rights.” Ncdcr.gov. North Carolina Digital Collections. 2025. https://digital.ncdcr.gov/Documents/Detail/tar-heel-junior-historian-2007-spring-v.46-no.2/3700448?item=5369794.
Morris, Aldon. 1981. “Black Southern Student Sit-in Movement: An Analysis of Internal Organization.” American Sociological Review 46 (6): 744. https://doi.org/10.2307/2095077.
Morris, Aldon D. 1984. The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change. New York: Free Press.
MUSE Winston-Salem. 2015. “NWM Oral History – Carl Matthews.” YouTube. August 13, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8DWv9xRo34.
O’Rourke, Sean Patrick, and Lesli K Pace. 2021. Five Civil Rights SitIns and the Rhetoric of Protest. University of South Carolina Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv10tq3bj.
Oppenheimer, Martin. 1989. The Sit-in Movement of 1960. Carlson.
Osha Gray Davidson. 2007. The Best of Enemies. Univ of North Carolina Press.
Schmidt, Christopher W. 2015. “Divided by Law: The Sit-Ins and the Role of the Courts in the Civil Rights Movement.” Law and History Review 33 (1): 93–149. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0738248014000509.
Sink, Alice. 2011. Wicked Greensboro. Arcadia Publishing.
SNCC. 1963. Come Let Us Build a New World Together. Victora and Albert Museum. https://www.vam.ac.uk/blog/museum-life/come-let-us-build-a-new-world-together.
SNCC. 1967. “The Indivisible Struggle against Racism, Apartheid and Colonialism.” https://www.crmvet.org/docs/apartheid_sncc.pdf.
Southern Christian Leadership Conference. 1960. “Delegates to Youth Leadership Conference, Shaw University, Raleigh N.C.” https://www.crmvet.org/docs/6004_shaw_delegations.pdf.
Southern Oral History Program. 2025. “Listening for a Change.” Unc.edu. 2025. https://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/search/collection/sohp/searchterm/cecelski/mode/any/order/title/page/1.
Turner, Francena. 2020. “Black Women and Student Activism at Fayetteville State, 1960-1972.” https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/items/116319.
Wheeler, Jean, Ezell Blair, Lucy Thornton, and Stokely Carmichael. 1964. Ezell Blair, Stokely Carmichael, Lucy Thornton and Jean Wheeler Interview by Robert Warren. https://whospeaks.library.vanderbilt.edu/interview/ezell-blair-stokely-carmichael-lucy-thornton-and-jean-wheeler.
Zinn, Howard. 1964. SNCC, the New Abolitionists. Boston: Beacon Press.
[1] SNCC, The Indivisible Struggle Against Racism, Apartheid and Colonialism.
[2] SNCC poster, “Come let us build a new world together,” 1963.
[3] Hogan, Many Minds, One Heart, 34.
[4] Civil Rights Movement Archive, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Founded (April).
[5] Hogan, 35.
[6] SCLC, Delegates to Youth Leadership Conference, Shaw University, Raleigh N.C.
[7] Baker and King, Youth Leadership Meeting, Shaw University, Raleigh N.C.
[8] Hogan, 41.
[9] Baker, More Than A Hamburger Speech.
[10] Hogan, 35.
[11] Zinn, SNCC, The New Abolitionists, 16.
[12] Andrews and Biggs, The Dynamics of Protest Diffusion: Movement Organizations, Social Networks, and News Media in the 1960 Sit-Ins, 750.
[13] Oppenheimer, The Sit-In Movement of 1960, 37.
[14] Oppenheimer, 36.
[15] Hogan, 27.
[16] Brown, Remembering Silence: Bennett College Women and the 1960 Greensboro Student Sit-Ins, 2.
[17] Brown, Remembering Silence, 12.
[18] Oppenheimer, 38.
[19] Hogan, 20-23.
[20] Hogan, 26.
[21] Hogan, 34.
[22] Hogan, 35-36.
[23] Hogan, 31.
[24] Alden, Black Southern Student Sit-in Movement: An Analysis of Internal Organization, 748.
[25] Luper, Behold the Walls, 3.
[26] Brown, Belles of Liberty: Gender, Bennett College, and the Civil Rights Movement in Greensboro, North Carolina, 53-54.
[27] Alden, 749-750.
[28] Alden, 749.
[29] Hogan, 31.
[30] Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change, 143.
[31] Morris, 198.
[32] Gordon Carey, interview by Nelson.
[33] Blair, Carmichael, Thornton, Wheeler interview by Robert Warren.
[34] Davidson, The Best of Enemies: Race and Redemption in the New South, 88.
[35] Davidson, 88.
[36] Davidson, 91.
[37] Davidson, 86.
[38] Schmidt, Divided by Law: The Sit-ins and the Role of the Courts in the Civil Rights Movement, 93-94.
[39] Quoted in Schmidt, 113.
[40] Bynum, NAACP Youth and the Fight for Black Freedom, 1936-1965, 99.
[41] Brown, Belles of Liberty, 31.
[42] Brown, Belles of Liberty, 55, 67.
[43] Brown, Belles of Liberty, 31.
[44] The history of Bennett women are often suppressed in the popular narrative of Greensboro. Linda Beatrice Brown’s work on the history of Bennett women and Greensboro in the 1960s is an excellent resource for countering this narrative.
[45] Blair, Carmichael, Thornton, Wheeler interview by Robert Warren.
[46] Davidson, 99.
[47] Davidson, 99.
[48] Morris, 198.
[49] Jones interview with unknown.
[50] Gershenhorn, Louis Austin and the Carolina Times: A Life in the Long Black Freedom Struggle, 153.
[51] Matthews interview with MUSE Winston-Salem.
[52] McDermott, Sitting Down for a Cup of Coffee and Civil Rights.
[53] Brown, Belles of Liberty, 73.
[54] Sink, Wicked Greensboro, 18.
[55] Brown, Belles of Liberty, 75.
[56] Brown, Remembering Silence, 16.
[57] Brown, Belles of Liberty, 74.
[58] Blair, Carmichael, Thornton, Wheeler interview by Robert Warren.
[59] Sink, 19.
[60] Hampton, Voices of Freedom: An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement from the 1950s Through the 1980s, 56.
[61] McDermott, Sitting Down for a Cup of Coffee and Civil Rights.
[62] Davidson, 100.
[63] Gershenhorn, 153-154.
[64] Davidson, 100.
[65] Hogan, 27.
[66] Davidson, 100.
[67] Carey interview with Vecchione.
[68] Morris, 199-200.
[69] Carey interview with Vecchione.
[70] Greene, Our Separate Ways: Women and the Black Freedom Movement in Durham, North Carolina, 76.
[71] Davidson, 101.
[72] Greene, 72.
[73] Greene, 73.
[74] Quoted in Greene, 76.
[75] Quoted in Greene, 76.
[76] Turner, Black Women and Student Activism at Fayetteville State, 1960-1972, 143.
[77] Turner, 146.
[78] Matthews interview with MUSE Winston-Salem.
[79] Dalton, I Am Not My Brother’s Keeper.
[80] Dalton, I Am Not My Brother’s Keeper..
[81] Bryan, Making History, 3.
[82] Dalton, I Am Not My Brother’s Keeper.
[83] Turner, 143.
[84] Leeman, The Charlotte, North Carolina, and Rock Hill, South Carolina, Sit-Ins: Constitutive Publics and the Role of Audience, 55.
[85] Jones interview with unknown.
[86] Grundy, Color & Character, 44.
[87] Turner, 151.
[88] Turner, 141.
[89] Turner, 144.
[90] Turner, 148.
[91] Forbes interview with Southern Oral History Program.
[92] Turner, 147-148.
[93] Compiled from a cross-referencing of Oppenheimer (42) and online sources.
[94] Compiled from a cross-referencing of Oppenheimer and archived sources.
[95] Oppenheimer, 42.
[96] An interview by the Charlotte Observer in 2010.
[97] Andrews and Biggs, 769.
[98] Andrews and Biggs, 765.
[99] Andrews and Biggs, 762.
[100] Andrews and Biggs, 763 and Zinn, 23.
[101] Hogan, 30.
[102] Morris, 749.