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Monday, January 18, 2010
News 'It started with a sit-in'
Posted By Rhiannon Fionn-Bowman on Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 11:43 AM
It's Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a day I usually wonder how far the struggle for equality has really come. I'm happy to note the progress we've made but anxious to witness more effort, more acceptance, more kindness.
In case you missed it, the Sunday edition of The Charlotte Observer included a story about the first sparks in the Civil Rights Movement, connecting the dots back to a meeting of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee at Raleigh's Shaw University half a century ago.
Here's a snippet:
On Feb. 1, 1960, students from the Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina (now N.C. A&T State University) sat down at a Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro, kicking off a wave of student-led sit-ins that led to violent confrontations, and eventually desegregation, in restaurants across the South. The idea spread like wildfire, mobilizing thousands of students - and King saw an opportunity.In April 1960, his group, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, pulled together a meeting of student leaders from all over the South. They chose to hold it at Shaw University, home to an active student movement and the alma mater of one of King's top aides, Ella Baker.
The idea was to harness the collective energy of students, who until then had been protesting in isolated groups within their own cities, and coordinate nonviolent protests.
At the time, Forbes was a Shaw student and the head of the Raleigh Sit-In Movement. Earlier that year, he had organized Raleigh's first sit-in at a downtown Woolworth. He had earned the distinction of being the first sit-in protester arrested in the Capital City.
He and hundreds of fellow students were gathering nearly every night to discuss strategy and train in nonviolent protest tactics, inspired by King. Their philosophy was to dress well, treat people respectfully and never to fight back against violent attacks. They learned to cover their heads and turn their backs to the blows.
"As King would say, love is more powerful than dynamite," Forbes said. "White folks use dogs and tanks and dynamite. White folks can quell riots, but they had not had any experience in dealing with love and passivity."
When King came to town for the conference, bringing an entourage of civil rights pioneers to Shaw's campus, Forbes said he brought another dimension to the fight.
The students, gathered from as far as Louisiana and New York, began to see themselves as a powerful collective. Forbes said King painted a picture for them of a tapestry that wove together every student movement in the nation.
"We were fired up," Forbes said. "We understood that America had not lived up to its true promise. And we clearly saw what the mandate was, what the dream was. And now we were hundreds of thousands strong."
Read the entire article, by Kristin Collins, here.
"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
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