The Sit-In Movement: Passive, Non-Violent Activist

The sit-in movement was a passive, non-violent technique used my members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). In February 1960, four black college students Joseph McNeil, Ezell Blair, Jr., Franklin McClain, and David Richmond sat at a Woolworth’s lunch counter reserved for “whites only” in downtown Greensboro, North Carolina. The day after the Woolworth sit-ins, more students from North Carolina, A&T, sat in at the store. Even though there were no confrontations, the local media covered the second sit-in. When the national media picked up the story, it resonated with other students who began to duplicate the sit-ins in other locations. Because the national attention garnered by the North Carolina sit-ins, students from