A nonviolent protest in which demonstrators occupy seats at a segregated counter or facility and refuse to leave until served.
In a sit-in, demonstrators take seats in a segregated space — most famously a whites-only lunch counter — ask to be served, and remain peacefully when refused, accepting arrest or abuse rather than leaving. The tactic had deep roots. In the 1940s Pauli Murray helped organize Howard University law students in sit-ins at segregated Washington restaurants, and in the early 1950s Mary Church Terrell, then in her eighties, led sit-ins, pickets, and a lawsuit that ended legal segregation in the capital’s restaurants.
The sit-in became a mass movement on 1 February 1960, when four students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College — Ezell Blair Jr. (later Jibreel Khazan), Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, and David Richmond — sat down at the whites-only counter of the F. W. Woolworth store in Greensboro and stayed until closing. They returned the next day with more than two dozen classmates, and on the third day students from Bennett College and Greensboro College joined them. The Greensboro Woolworth counter was desegregated on 25 July 1960.
By the end of February sit-ins had occurred at more than 30 locations in 7 states, and by the end of April more than 50,000 students had taken part. The movement was strongest in Nashville, where James Lawson’s workshops in Gandhian nonviolence trained John Lewis, Diane Nash, and others. In April 1960 Ella Baker convened sit-in leaders at Shaw University in Raleigh; the 126 student delegates founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which carried the sit-in generation into the Freedom Rides and Freedom Summer.
See also: Jim Crow, Freedom Rides, Freedom Summer, Civil Rights Act of 1964
Sources
- NCpedia, “Greensboro Sit-Ins.” Link
- Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University, “Sit-Ins.” Link
- SNCC Digital Gateway, “Founding of SNCC.” Link
- NCpedia, “Standing Their Ground: The Sit-In at the Greensboro Woolworth’s Store (February 1, 1960).” Link
Related on Black-History.com
Cite this page
- MLA
- “Sit-In.” Black-History.com, 30 Sept. 2026, https://black-history.com/glossary/sit-in/.
- APA
- Black-History.com Editors. (2026, September 30). Sit-In. Black-History.com. https://black-history.com/glossary/sit-in/
- Chicago
- Black-History.com Editors. “Sit-In.” Black-History.com. September 30, 2026. https://black-history.com/glossary/sit-in/.
By the Black-History.com editors. Last reviewed 30 September 2026. To suggest a primary source or a correction, write to editors@black-history.com or use our corrections form.