The civil rights movement was based on African American and white people having equal right in all aspects of life. During the 1960s there was still a lot segregation in different establishments such as bars, dinners, variety stores and more. And it had got to the point where a lot of African Americans where getting fed up with being treated differently. So finally, on February 1, 1960 four African American freshmen from the agricultural and Technical college in Greensboro, North Carolina went into a Woolworth’s variety store, they all bought a few things, and decided to sit down at the lunch counter that was reserved for the white coffee drikers.
At this point in time it was not ok for blacks to just sit where ever they want so things got a little hectic for the African Americans because they wouldn’t get up. They were not only refused service but they were also told to leave the store all together. However, they never left and sat there until the store closed. The very next day the four freshmen were joined by twenty more students. And by the end of the week they were accompanied by nearly a thousand student and they all stood around the counter. Eventually Woolworth’s closed until further notice. This display of action is known as passive resistance, or a sit in, this was the first time that segregation in a privately owned establishment, and attracted national attention to the civil rights movement.
This wouldn’t be the last time we see a sit in, the very next year picketing, boycotts, and sit-ins ended segregation at beaches and in restaurants. In a way the youth of the era are who started the sit-ins there were more sit-ins in other cities, African American students staged sit-ins in Raleigh, Durham, Charlotte, and Fayetteville. On October 19, 1960 a large group of seventy five African Americans marched into the all white Rick’s Department Store in Atlanta and they all refused to leave while singing, “We Shall Over Come.” Martin Luther King, Jr. being the leader of the march was sentenced to four months of hard labor in Reidsville State Prison.
In 1961, the civil rights demonstrators came up with the freedom ride. Two veterans from the sit-ins, Gordon Carey and Tom Gaither came up with the idea while sitting on the bus and stuck in a snow storm on their way to New York. And they pretty much figured out the scheme of the whole freedom ride while they were on the bus that day. And man by the name of James Farmer who was the head of operations, boarded members on buses in Washington D.C. and they all went off on the freedom ride. The buses went to the South to challenge the segregation of terminals and interstate travel, what was recently declared illegal by the Supreme Court.
Through all that was going on President John F. Kennedy, was all for stopping all segregation that was going on at the time. In his inaugural speech, John F. Kennedy specifically focused on human rights to which this nation has always been committed and to which we are committed today at home. On September 20, 1962 Kennedy sent over some federal troops to the University of Mississippi in Oxford, where James Meredith, an African American Air force veteran, tried to enroll. When resisted by state troops mobilized by Governor Ross Barnett, Kennedy federalized the Mississippi National Guard and on national television appealed to the students at the university to accept desegregation. He went on to do the same with two more African American students Vivian Malone and James Hood.