Sit-in
Encyclopedia


A sit-in or sit-down
Sitdown strike
A sit-down strike is a form of civil disobedience in which an organized group of workers, usually employed at a factory or other centralized location, take possession of the workplace by "sitting down" at their stations, effectively preventing their employers from replacing them with strikebreakers...

is a form of protest that involves occupying seats or sitting down on the floor of an establishment.

Process

In a sit-in, protesters remain until they are evicted, usually by force, or arrested, or until their requests have been met. Sit-ins have historically been a highly successful form of protest because they cause disruption that draws attention to the protesters' cause. They are a non-violent way to effectively shut down an area or business. The forced removal of protesters, and sometimes the use of violence against them, often arouses sympathy from the public, increasing the chances of the demonstrators reaching their goal.

Martin Luther King was arrested in one sit-in, and was not released for 4 months. A sit-in is similar to a sit-down strike. However, whereas a sit-in involves protesters, a sit-down strike involves striking
Strike action
Strike action, also called labour strike, on strike, greve , or simply strike, is a work stoppage caused by the mass refusal of employees to work. A strike usually takes place in response to employee grievances. Strikes became important during the industrial revolution, when mass labour became...

 workers occupying the area in which they would be working and refusing to leave so they can not be replaced with scabs. The sit-down strike was the precursor to the sit-in.

History

Sit-ins were first widely employed by Mohandas Gandhi in South African strikes. He may have been influenced by the Indian
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

 practice of Dharna
Dharna
A dharna , is a fast undertaken at the door of an offender, especially a debtor, in India as a means of obtaining compliance with a demand for justice, such as payment of a debt....

, fasting outside the home of someone who owed one a debt. Sit-ins were later used in the Indian independence movement
Indian independence movement
The term Indian independence movement encompasses a wide area of political organisations, philosophies, and movements which had the common aim of ending first British East India Company rule, and then British imperial authority, in parts of South Asia...

, and were later expanded on by Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee ' was one of the principal organizations of the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. It emerged from a series of student meetings led by Ella Baker held at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina in April 1960...

 and others during the African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968)
African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968)
The African-American Civil Rights Movement refers to the movements in the United States aimed at outlawing racial discrimination against African Americans and restoring voting rights to them. This article covers the phase of the movement between 1955 and 1968, particularly in the South...

. Also the protests in Germany
German student movement
The German student movement was a protest movement that took place during the late 1960s in West Germany. It was largely a reaction against the perceived authoritarianism and hypocrisy of the German government and other Western governments, and the poor living conditions of students...

. The Young Lords
Young Lords
The Young Lords, later Young Lords Organization and in New York , Young Lords Party, was a Puerto Rican nationalist group in several United States cities, notably New York City and Chicago.-Founding:...

 in Chicago's Lincoln Park
Lincoln Park
Lincoln Park is an urban park in Chicago, which gave its name to the Lincoln Park, Chicago community area.Lincoln Park may also refer to:-Urban parks:*Lincoln Park , California*Lincoln Park, San Francisco, California...

 neighborhood used it successfully for a whole week to win community demands for low income housing investment at the McCormick Theological Seminary
McCormick Theological Seminary
McCormick Theological Seminary is one of eleven schools of theology of the Presbyterian Church . It shares a campus with the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, bordering the campus of the University of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois...

.

Civil Rights Movement

Although never used to block public streets, sit-ins were an integral part of the non-violent strategy of civil disobedience
Civil disobedience
Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government, or of an occupying international power. Civil disobedience is commonly, though not always, defined as being nonviolent resistance. It is one form of civil resistance...

 and mass protests that eventually led to passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a landmark piece of legislation in the United States that outlawed major forms of discrimination against African Americans and women, including racial segregation...

 which ended legally-sanctioned racial segregation in the United States
Racial segregation in the United States
Racial segregation in the United States, as a general term, included the racial segregation or hypersegregation of facilities, services, and opportunities such as housing, medical care, education, employment, and transportation along racial lines...

. The Fellowship of Reconciliation
Fellowship of Reconciliation
The Fellowship of Reconciliation is the name used by a number of religious nonviolent organizations, particularly in English-speaking countries...

 (FOR) and the Congress of Racial Equality
Congress of Racial Equality
The Congress of Racial Equality or CORE was a U.S. civil rights organization that originally played a pivotal role for African-Americans in the Civil Rights Movement...

 (CORE) conducted sit-ins as early as the 1940s. Ernest Calloway refers to Bernice Fisher
Bernice Fisher
Bernice Fisher was a civil rights activist and union organizer. She was one of the original founders of the Congress of Racial Equality...

 as "Godmother of the restaurant 'sit-in' technique." In August, 1939, African-American attorney Samuel Wilbert Tucker
Samuel Wilbert Tucker
Samuel Wilbert Tucker was an American lawyer and a cooperating attorney with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People . As a founding partner in the Richmond, Virginia firm of Hill, Tucker and Marsh, he is best remembered for one of his several civil rights cases before the...

 organized a sit-in at the then-segregated Alexandria, Virginia
Alexandria, Virginia
Alexandria is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia. As of 2009, the city had a total population of 139,966. Located along the Western bank of the Potomac River, Alexandria is approximately six miles south of downtown Washington, D.C.Like the rest of northern Virginia, as well as...

 library. Congress of Industrial Organizations
Congress of Industrial Organizations
The Congress of Industrial Organizations, or CIO, proposed by John L. Lewis in 1932, was a federation of unions that organized workers in industrial unions in the United States and Canada from 1935 to 1955. The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 required union leaders to swear that they were not...

 (CIO) labor delegates had a brief, spontaneous lunch counter sit-in during their 1947 Columbus, Ohio
Columbus, Ohio
Columbus is the capital of and the largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio. The broader metropolitan area encompasses several counties and is the third largest in Ohio behind those of Cleveland and Cincinnati. Columbus is the third largest city in the American Midwest, and the fifteenth largest city...

 convention.

In one of the earliest racially-connected sit-ins, followers of Father Divine
Father Divine
Father Divine , also known as Reverend M. J. Divine, was an African American spiritual leader from about 1907 until his death. His full self-given name was Reverend Major Jealous Divine, and he was also known as "the Messenger" early in his life...

 and the International Peace Mission Movement
International Peace Mission movement
The International Peace Mission movement was the religious movement started by Father Divine, an African-American who claimed to be God.-History:...

 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, Sep 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."

With the encouragement of Melvin B. Tolson
Melvin B. Tolson
Melvin Beaunorus Tolson was an American Modernist poet, educator, columnist, and politician. His work concentrated on the experience of African Americans and includes several long historical poems. His work was influenced by his study of the Harlem Renaissance, although he spent nearly all of...

 and James L. Farmer
James L. Farmer, Jr.
James Leonard Farmer, Jr. was a civil rights activist and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement. He was the initiator and organizer of the 1961 Freedom Ride, which eventually led to the desegregation of inter-state transportation in the United States.In 1942, Farmer co-founded the Committee...

, students from Wiley
Wiley College
Wiley College is a four-year, private, historically black, liberal arts college located on the west side of Marshall, Texas. Founded in 1873 by the Methodist Episcopal Church's Bishop Isaac Wiley and certified in 1882 by the Freedman's Aid Society, it is notable as one of the oldest predominantly...

 and Bishop College
Bishop College
Bishop College was a historically black college, founded in Marshall, Texas, and later moved to Dallas, Texas, that operated from 1881 to 1988.-History:...

s organized the first sit-ins in Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...

 in the rotunda
Rotunda (architecture)
A rotunda is any building with a circular ground plan, sometimes covered by a dome. It can also refer to a round room within a building . The Pantheon in Rome is a famous rotunda. A Band Rotunda is a circular bandstand, usually with a dome...

 of the Harrison County
Harrison County, Texas
Harrison County is a county of the U.S. state of Texas. In 2000, its population was 62,110. It is named for Jonas Harrison, a lawyer and Texas revolutionary. It is located in the Ark-La-Tex region...

 Courthouse in Marshall
Marshall, Texas
Marshall is a city in Harrison County in the northeastern corner of Texas. Marshall is a major cultural and educational center in East Texas and the tri-state area. As of the 2010 U.S. Census, the population of Marshall was about 23,523...

, Texas. This sit-in directly challenged the oldest White Citizens Party in Texas and would culminate in the reversal of Jim Crow laws
Jim Crow laws
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities, with a supposedly "separate but equal" status for black Americans...

 in the state and the desegregation of postgraduate studies in Texas by the Sweatt v. Painter
Sweatt v. Painter
Sweatt v. Painter, , was a U.S. Supreme Court case that successfully proved lack of equality, in favor of a black applicant, the "separate but equal" doctrine of racial segregation established by the 1896 case Plessy v. Ferguson. The case was also influential in the landmark case of Brown v...

(1950) verdict.

1958 Wichita and Oklahoma City sit-ins

The first organized lunch-counter sit-in for the purpose of integrating segregated establishments began in July 1958 in Wichita, Kansas
Wichita, Kansas
Wichita is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kansas.As of the 2010 census, the city population was 382,368. Located in south-central Kansas on the Arkansas River, Wichita is the county seat of Sedgwick County and the principal city of the Wichita metropolitan area...

 with the Dockum Drug Store sit-in
Dockum Drug Store sit-in
The Dockum Drug Store sit-in was one of the first organized lunch-counter sit-ins for the purpose of integrating segregated establishments in the United States. The protest began in July 1958 in Wichita, Kansas at the Dockum Drug Store, a store in the old Rexall chain, in which protesters would sit...

, which targeted a store in the old Rexall chain. In early August the drugstore became integrated. A few weeks later on August 19, 1958 in Oklahoma City
Oklahoma city
Oklahoma City is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Oklahoma.Oklahoma City may also refer to:*Oklahoma City metropolitan area*Downtown Oklahoma City*Uptown Oklahoma City*Oklahoma City bombing*Oklahoma City National Memorial...

 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
NAACP youth council
The NAACP Youth Council is a branch of the NAACP in which youth are actively involved. In past years, council participants organized under the council's name to make major strides in the 1950s and 1960s Civil Rights Movement...

 leader Clara Luper
Clara Luper
Clara Shepard Luper was a civic leader, retired schoolteacher, and a pioneering leader in the American Civil Rights Movement...

, 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
Wichita, Kansas
Wichita is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kansas.As of the 2010 census, the city population was 382,368. Located in south-central Kansas on the Arkansas River, Wichita is the county seat of Sedgwick County and the principal city of the Wichita metropolitan area...

, stands a statue depicting a waitress at a counter serving people, honoring this pioneering sit-in.

1960 Greensboro and Nashville sit-ins

Following the Oklahoma City
Oklahoma city
Oklahoma City is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Oklahoma.Oklahoma City may also refer to:*Oklahoma City metropolitan area*Downtown Oklahoma City*Uptown Oklahoma City*Oklahoma City bombing*Oklahoma City National Memorial...

 sit-ins, the tactic of non-violent student sit-ins spread. The Greensboro Sit-In
Greensboro sit-ins
The Greensboro sit-ins were a series of nonviolent protests which led to the Woolworth's department store chain reversing its policy of racial segregation in the Southern United States....

 at a Woolworth's in Greensboro, North Carolina
Greensboro, North Carolina
Greensboro is a city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. It is the third-largest city by population in North Carolina and the largest city in Guilford County and the surrounding Piedmont Triad metropolitan region. According to the 2010 U.S...

, 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. Within weeks, sit-in campaigns had begun in nearly a dozen cities, primarily targeting Woolworth's and S. H. Kress
S. H. Kress & Co.
S. H. Kress & Co. was the trading name of a chain of "five and dime" retail department stores in the United States, which operated from 1896 to 1981....

 and other stores of other national chains.

The largest, and best organized of these sit-in campaigns was the already ongoing, in terms of its planning and groundwork, Nashville sit-ins
Nashville sit-ins
The Nashville sit-ins, which lasted from February 13 to May 10, 1960, were part of a nonviolent direct action campaign to end racial segregation at lunch counters in downtown Nashville, Tennessee...

. They involved hundreds of participants, and led to the successful desegregation of Nashville lunch counter
Lunch counter
A lunch counter is a small restaurant, much like a diner, where the patron sits on a stool on one side of the counter and the server or person preparing the food serves from the other side of the counter, where the kitchen or limited food preparation area is. As the name suggests, they were most...

s. Most of the participants in the Nashville sit-ins were college students, and many, such as Diane Nash
Diane Nash
Diane Judith Nash was a leader and strategist of the student wing of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. A historian described her as: "…bright, focused, utterly fearless, with an unerring instinct for the correct tactical move at each increment of the crisis; as a leader, her instincts had been...

, James Bevel
James Bevel
James L. Bevel was an American minister and leader of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement who, as the Director of Direct Action and Director of Nonviolent Education of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference initiated, strategized, directed, and developed SCLC's three major successes of the era:...

, Bernard Lafayette
Bernard Lafayette
Bernard Lafayette Jr. is a longtime civil rights activist and organizer, who was a leader in the 1960s Civil Rights Movement...

, and C.T. Vivian, went on to lead, strategize, and direct almost every aspect of the nation's Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. The students of the historically black colleges and universities
Historically Black Colleges and Universities
Historically black colleges and universities are institutions of higher education in the United States that were established before 1964 with the intention of serving the black community....

 in the city played a critical role in implementing the Nashville sit-ins.

1989 Tiananmen Square Protests

During the Tiananmen Square
Tiananmen Square
Tiananmen Square is a large city square in the center of Beijing, China, named after the Tiananmen Gate located to its North, separating it from the Forbidden City. Tiananmen Square is the third largest city square in the world...

 protests, sit-ins were staged in the square during the protests. There was also a sit-in on the morning of 18 April, as students sat in front of the Great Hall of the People, the office of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress
Standing Committee of the National People's Congress
The Standing Committee of the National People's Congress is a committee of about 150 members of the National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China , which is convened between plenary sessions of the NPC. It has the constitutional authority to modify legislation within limits set by...

; they demanded to see members of the Standing Committee. Meanwhile, a few thousand students gathered in front of the Zhongnanhai
Zhongnanhai
Zhongnanhai is an area in central Beijing, China adjacent to the Forbidden City which serves as the central headquarters for the Communist Party of China and the State Council of the People's Republic of China. The term Zhongnanhai is closely linked with the central government and senior Communist...

 building complex, the residence of the government, demanding to see government leaders and get answers to their earlier demands. Students tried to muscle their way through the gate by pushing, but security and police, locking arms, formed a cordon
Cordon
A cordon is also a line of people, military posts, or ships surrounding an area to close or guard it.Cordon may also refer to:* Cordon and search, a military operation...

 that eventually deterred students' attempts to enter through the gate. Students then staged a sit-in. Some government officials did unofficially meet with student representatives, but without an official response, frustrations continued to mount. On 20 April, police finally dispersed the students in front of Zhongnanhai
Zhongnanhai
Zhongnanhai is an area in central Beijing, China adjacent to the Forbidden City which serves as the central headquarters for the Communist Party of China and the State Council of the People's Republic of China. The term Zhongnanhai is closely linked with the central government and senior Communist...

 by force, employing batons, and minor clashes were reported.

See also

  • Bed-In
    Bed-In
    During the Vietnam War, in 1969, John Lennon and Yoko Ono held two week-long Bed-Ins for Peace in Amsterdam and Montreal, which were their non-violent ways of protesting wars and promoting peace...

    , peace campaigns by John Lennon
    John Lennon
    John Winston Lennon, MBE was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music...

     and Yoko Ono
    Yoko Ono
    is a Japanese artist, musician, author and peace activist, known for her work in avant-garde art, music and filmmaking as well as her marriage to John Lennon...

     in 1969
  • Die-in
    Die-in
    A die-in is a form of protest where participants simulate being dead.- Overview :In the simplest form of a die-in, protesters simply lie down on the ground and pretend to be dead, sometimes covering themselves with signs or banners...

  • Human Be-In
    Human Be-In
    The Human Be-In was a happening in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, the afternoon and evening of January 14, 1967. It was a prelude to San Francisco's Summer of Love, which made the Haight-Ashbury district a symbol as the center of an American counterculture and introduced the word 'psychedelic'...

  • Teach-in
    Teach-in
    A teach-in is similar to a general educational forum on any complicated issue, usually an issue involving current political affairs. The main difference between a teach-in and a seminar is the refusal to limit the discussion to a specific frame of time or an academic scope of the topic. Teach-ins...

  • Work-in
    Work-in
    A work-in is a form of direct action, where a group of workers whose jobs are under threat resolve to remain in their place of employment and continue producing without pay...

  • Occupation (protest)
    Occupation (protest)
    An as an act of protest, is the entry into and holding of a building, space or symbolic site. As such, occupations often combine some of the following elements: a challenge to ownership of the space involved, an effort to gain public attention, the practical use of the facilities occupied, and a...

  • Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
    Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
    The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, also known as the June Fourth Incident in Chinese , were a series of demonstrations in and near Tiananmen Square in Beijing in the People's Republic of China beginning on 15 April 1989...

  • Ahimsa
    Ahimsa
    Ahimsa is a term meaning to do no harm . The word is derived from the Sanskrit root hims – to strike; himsa is injury or harm, a-himsa is the opposite of this, i.e. non harming or nonviolence. It is an important tenet of the Indian religions...

  • Anti-war
    Anti-war
    An anti-war movement is a social movement, usually in opposition to a particular nation's decision to start or carry on an armed conflict, unconditional of a maybe-existing just cause. The term can also refer to pacifism, which is the opposition to all use of military force during conflicts. Many...

  • Anarcho-pacifism
    Anarcho-pacifism
    Anarcho-pacifism is a tendency within the anarchist movement which rejects the use of violence in the struggle for social change. The main early influences were the thought of Henry David Thoreau and Leo Tolstoy while later the ideas of Mohandas Gandhi gained importance...

  • Christian anarchism
    Christian anarchism
    Christian anarchism is a movement in political theology that combines anarchism and Christianity. It is the belief that there is only one source of authority to which Christians are ultimately answerable, the authority of God as embodied in the teachings of Jesus...

  • Christian pacifism
    Christian pacifism
    Christian pacifism is the theological and ethical position that any form of violence is incompatible with the Christian faith. Christian pacifists state that Jesus himself was a pacifist who taught and practiced pacifism, and that his followers must do likewise.There have been various notable...

  • Civil disobedience
    Civil disobedience
    Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government, or of an occupying international power. Civil disobedience is commonly, though not always, defined as being nonviolent resistance. It is one form of civil resistance...

  • Civil resistance
    Civil resistance
    The term civil resistance, alongside the term nonviolent resistance, is used to describe political action that relies on the use of non-violent methods by civil groups to challenge a particular power, force, policy or regime. Civil resistance operates through appeals to the adversary, pressure and...

  • Conflict Resolution
    Conflict resolution
    Conflict resolution is conceptualized as the methods and processes involved in facilitating the peaceful ending of some social conflict. Often, committed group members attempt to resolve group conflicts by actively communicating information about their conflicting motives or ideologies to the rest...

  • Consistent life ethic
    Consistent Life Ethic
    The consistent life ethic, or the consistent ethic of life, was a term coined in 1983 by Joseph Cardinal Bernardin to express an ethical, religious, and political ideology based on the premise that all human life was sacred and should be protected by law. The ideology opposes legal abortion,...

  • Department of Peace
  • Direct action
    Direct action
    Direct action is activity undertaken by individuals, groups, or governments to achieve political, economic, or social goals outside of normal social/political channels. This can include nonviolent and violent activities which target persons, groups, or property deemed offensive to the direct action...

  • Non-aggression principle
    Non-aggression principle
    The non-aggression principle , or NAP for short, is a moral stance which asserts that aggression is inherently illegitimate...

  • Nonkilling
    Nonkilling
    Nonkilling refers to the absence of killing, threats to kill, and conditions conducive to killing in human society. Even though the use of the term in the academic world refers mostly to the killing of human beings, it is sometimes extended to include the killing of animals and other forms of life...

  • Nonresistance
    Nonresistance
    Nonresistance is generally defined as "the practice or principle of not resisting authority, even when it is unjustly exercised". At its core is discouragement of, even opposition to, physical resistance to an enemy...

  • Nonviolent Communication
    Nonviolent communication
    Nonviolent Communication is a communication process developed by Marshall Rosenberg beginning in the 1960s. NVC often functions as a conflict resolution process...

  • Nonviolent resistance
    Nonviolent resistance
    Nonviolent resistance is the practice of achieving goals through symbolic protests, civil disobedience, economic or political noncooperation, and other methods, without using violence. It is largely synonymous with civil resistance...

  • Nonviolent revolution
    Nonviolent revolution
    A nonviolent revolution is a revolution using mostly campaigns of civil resistance, including various forms of nonviolent protest, to bring about the departure of governments seen as entrenched and authoritarian...

  • Pacifism
    Pacifism
    Pacifism is the opposition to war and violence. The term "pacifism" was coined by the French peace campaignerÉmile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress inGlasgow in 1901.- Definition :...

  • Satyagraha
    Satyagraha
    Satyagraha , loosely translated as "insistence on truth satya agraha soul force" or "truth force" is a particular philosophy and practice within the broader overall category generally known as nonviolent resistance or civil resistance. The term "satyagraha" was conceived and developed by Mahatma...

  • Social defence
    Social defence
    The term "social defence" is used to describe non-military action by a society or social group, particularly in a context of a sustained campaign against outside attack or dictatorial rule - or preparations for such a campaign in the event of external attack or usurpation...

  • Transformative justice
    Transformative justice
    Transformative justice is a general philosophical strategy for responding to conflicts. It takes the principles and practices of restorative justice beyond the criminal justice system. It applies to areas such as environmental law, corporate law, labor-management relations, consumer bankruptcy and...

  • Turning the other cheek
  • War resister
    War resister
    A war resister is a person who resists war. The term can mean several things: resisting participation in all war, or a specific war, either before or after enlisting in, being inducted into, or being conscripted into a military force....



External links


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