The sit-ins started when four black college students in Greensboro, North Carolina, sat at a lunch counter reserved for whites. The students had been affiliated with the NAACP Youth Chapters, but they initiated their protest without consulting adult leaders. Thousands of students started to organize their own sit-ins across the state. The sit-in tactic offered a way for young blacks without special skills and resource to display their discontent.
By sitting down at the counter and demanding service, the students challenged not only counter segregation but the whole Jim Crow structure. The students of course were not served. They remained at the counter until the store closed. The protesting students had formed an organization, the Student Executive Committee for Justice, and had recruited enough members to paralyze the operation of lunch counters.
The sit-in movement received a great deal of help from CORE which had pioneered in sit-in demonstrations. CORE sent field secretaries to bail out arrested students and gave demonstrations the benefit of their experience. One of the ideas that came out of the condition between CORE and the sit-inners was the student credo.
Student Credo.
• Don't strike back or curse if abused.
• Don't laugh out.
• Don't hold conservations with floor workers.
• Don't block entrances to the store or aisles.
• Show yourself courteous and friendly at all times.
• Sit straight and always face the counter.
• Remember love and nonviolence.
• May God bless each of you.
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Freedom Riders.
On May 04, 1961, a group a blacks and whites started out for a trip to test the Supreme Court order outlawing segregation in bus terminals. They called themselves Freedom Riders. Ten days into the trip they pulled into a bus terminal. A group of white mobs were waiting for them carrying pipes, clubs, bricks and knives.
