Ursinus Weekly on the Sit In Movement

Ursinus Weekly on the Sit In Movement

Commentary on the Sit-In Movement

In an Ursinus Weekly newspaper article from May 9th 1960, an unknown author commentates on the Sit-In movement which began earlier that year in February, when four black students from North Carolina A&T sat down at a Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro that was designated for white people to sit and black people to stand. After increasing their numbers the next day, seating more black students at the same store, news broke out and the movement sparked an uprising of Sit-Ins, not only for students but people of color. The article reports scattered incidents that brought a multitude of controversy to the North and South, which followed the movement’s occurrences as many blacks in Raleigh, North and South Carolina, and Nashville, were were arrested for participating in the movement. This article mentions the emergence of the KKK targeting black colleges and racial equality groups such as CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) and EPIC (Emergency Public Integration Committee) which were organizations that coordinated these movements and campaigned to raise funds to notify other U.S. colleges, (specifically Northern ones), including Ursinus, where news of the stoic Sit In movement inspired many to support, protest the southern stores, and raise funds for the arrested black individuals who had participated in the Sit-Ins. In Spring of 1960, the idea of racial equality at universities was certainly evident as Ursinus students protested these Southern Woolworth stores, and alumni such as Connie Hoover an Ursinus graduate of the Class of 1958 and member of the Union Theological Seminary, gave two chapel talks that advocated for and favored the Sit-In movement actions and purpose, as well as three Ursinus students, Barbara Bogel, Mary Dassler, and Lynne Habel who had interest and opinions on racial equality leading them to attend a convention of the United States Student Association in Washington, D. C. in hopes to provide insight towards the movement and its peaceful tactics.

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Ursinus Weekly Newspaper Article

Ursinus Weekly

1960

Ursinus College

412 KB

english

photo

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