Nashville Sit-ins - Full-scale Demonstrations

Full-scale Demonstrations

Before the students in Nashville had a chance to formalize their plans, events elsewhere brought renewed urgency to the effort. During the first week of February 1960, a small sit-in demonstration in Greensboro, North Carolina grew into a significant protest with over eighty students participating by the third day. Although similar demonstrations had occurred previously in other cities, this was the first to attract substantial media attention and public notice. When Lawson's group met the subsequent Friday night, about 500 new volunteers showed up to join the cause. Although Lawson and other adult organizers argued for delay, the student leaders insisted that the time had come for action.

The first large-scale organized sit-in was on Saturday, February 13, 1960. At about 12:30 pm, 124 students, most of them black, walked into the downtown Woolworths, S. H. Kress, and McClellan stores and asked to be served at the lunch counters. After the staff refused to serve them, they sat in the stores for two hours and then left without incident.

On the Monday following the first sit-in, the Baptist Minister's Conference of Nashville, representing 79 congregations, unanimously voted to support the student movement, thus throwing the weight of Nashville's black religious community behind the students. Local religious leaders called on people of good will to boycott downtown merchants who practiced segregation. Nashville's black community strongly supported the boycott, causing economic hardship for the merchants.

The second sit-in occurred on Thursday, February 18, when more than 200 students entered Woolworths, S. H. Kress, McClellan, and Grants. The lunch counters were immediately closed. The students remained for about half an hour and then left, again without incident. The third sit-in occurred on February 20 when about 350 students entered the previous four stores and the downtown Walgreens drugstore. As the students sat at the counters, crowds of white youths gathered in several of the stores. Police kept a watchful eye on all five locations, but no incidents of violence occurred. The students remained for nearly three hours until adjourning to a mass meeting at the First Baptist Church.

Tensions mounted over the following week as sit-in demonstrations spread to other cities and race riots broke out in nearby Chattanooga. On February 27, the Nashville student activists held a fourth sit-in at the Woolworths, McClellan, and Walgreens stores. Crowds of white youths again gathered in the stores to taunt and harass the demonstrators. This time, however, police were not present. Eventually, several of the sit-in demonstrators were attacked by hecklers in the McClellan and Woolworths stores. Some were pulled from their seats and beaten, and one demonstrator was pushed down a flight of stairs. When police arrived, the white attackers fled and none were arrested. Police then ordered the demonstrators at all three locations to leave the stores. When the demonstrators refused to leave, they were arrested and loaded into police vehicles as onlookers applauded. Eighty-one students were arrested and charged with loitering and disorderly conduct.

The arrests brought a surge of media coverage to the sit-in campaign, including national television news coverage, front page stories in both of Nashville's daily newspapers, and an Associated Press story. The students generally viewed any media coverage as helpful to their cause, especially when it illustrated their commitment to nonviolence.

Several other sit-ins took place over the following two months, resulting in more arrests and further attacks against sit-in participants. Over 150 students were arrested. Throughout the demonstrations, the student activists maintained a policy of disciplined nonviolence. Their written code of conduct became a model followed by demonstrators in other cities:

"Do not strike back or curse if abused. Do not laugh out. Do not hold conversations with the floor walker. Do not leave your seat until your leader has given you permission to do so. Do not block entrances to stores outside nor the aisles inside. Do show yourself courteous and friendly at all times. Do sit straight; always face the counter. Do report all serious incidents to your leader. Do refer information seekers to your leader in a polite manner. Remember the teachings of Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King. Love and nonviolence is the way."