The South: Sit-In Anniversary

Southern Negroes have won their greatest practical advances in one short year, not from any Supreme Court decision or federal intervention, but from the simple, peaceful protest of the sit-in. Last week Negro students marched in silent files in key cities across the South to celebrate the anniversary of the first lunch-counter sit-in movement in a Greensboro, N.C. five and ten—and the achievement of lunch-counter integration in at least 85 other Southern cities. But last week’s marchers were anything but jubilant. The anniversary launched a fight for equality on another front: movie theaters.

In Atlanta, Ga., Nashville, Tenn., Charlotte, Greensboro and High Point, N.C., the quiet, carefully mannered Negro students queued up at the white-only box offices of movie houses. One after another they requested tickets; as each was refused he went to the end of the line to start over. In Hampton, Va., a group of students bought tickets to a segregated theater and sat in the white-only seats. Fifteen were arrested.

At a meeting commemorating the Greensboro sit-in, a Winston-Salem minister ticked off a long list of “ins” that are still to come. Among them: pray-ins, apply-ins (equality of employment opportunity), buy-ins (equal opportunity to purchase homes), study-ins and bury-ins.