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Although integrating the nation's schools was the first priority of the civil rights movement, the denial of equal access to public
accommodations affected all blacks, not just students. Blacks could not use restaurants, bathrooms, water fountains,
public parks, beaches, or swimming pools used by whites. They had to use separate entrances to doctor's offices
and sit in separate waiting rooms. They could only sit in the balcony or in other designated areas of theaters. They
had to ride at the back of streetcars and buses.
On July 14, 1944, Irene Morgan boarded a bus from Gloucester, Virginia, to Baltimore and was passing through
Richmond when she was told she was defying Virginia's 1930 law segregating seating by rows. She refused to
move and was ejected. A state court rejected her argument, but in 1946 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 7–1 that
Virginia had no right to impose segregation beyond its borders. Segregation on interstate bus travel was ended.
It took Rosa Parks's similar refusal in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1955 to extend the same principle to bus travel
within a state.
In 1960, in Boynton v. Virginia, the Supreme Court extended the Morgan ruling to bus terminals used in
interstate bus service. Nonetheless, many African Americans were ejected or arrested when they tried to
integrate such facilities. In 1961, hundreds of volunteers from across the country traveled to the South to
test compliance with the Boynton decision by riding from Washington, D.C., to New Orleans. Known
collectively as the Freedom Riders, they encountered little opposition beyond words as they traveled
through Virginia. Violent resistance, however, was encountered from South Carolina to Alabama,
where buses were set on fire.
Students urged that the focus of struggle turn to nonviolent direct action in the streets rather than
legal battles in courtrooms. The lunch counter sit-ins began in 1960. Martin Luther King encouraged
this "revolt against the apathy and complacency of adults in the Negro community, against Negroes
in the middle class who indulge in buying cars and homes instead of taking on the great cause
that will really solve their problems."
The sit-in tactic was borrowed from the labor movement, where it was used successfully in the late
1930s in the auto and steel industries. Workers sat down on the job, preventing management or
replacement workers from resuming production. At lunch counters, protesters—mostly black
and white students—occupied seats on the principle "sit until served." They were not served,
but as the seats were occupied, neither were any whites, and the businesses lost money. By
the end of 1961, Woolworth's and other chain stores had desegregated their lunch counters.
However, not all store owners gave in. It took the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to ban racial
segregation "by businesses offering food, lodging, gasoline, or entertainment to the public."
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Norton All-Stars Little League baseball team, 1951
In 1951 twelve-year-old Lann Malesky and his family had recently moved
to the small coal mining town of Norton in southwest Virginia. He remembers the pervasive segregation but
also the excitement of playing baseball with the Norton All-Stars, a Little League team that was integrated
from its inception. Courtesy Lann Malesky. |
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Washington Afro-American newspaper
Segregated bus travel between states was outlawed by the 1946
U.S. Supreme Court decision in Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia. Irene Morgan, a black woman,
refused to move to the back of a Greyhound bus on a trip from Gloucester to Baltimore. The Supreme
Court overturned her conviction by a lower court of violating Virginia's 1930 law segregated buses by
rows. In principle, the decision had far-reaching application to integrating railroad and airline travel.
However, segregation was still widely practiced in transportation until the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Virginia Historical Society. |
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Lunch counter sit-in, Arlington, 1960
On June 9, 1960, an integrated group of young people held a sit-in at a
Peoples Drug Store lunch counter in Arlington. Waitresses served the whites, then walked away. A few minutes
later it was announced that the lunch counter was closed. The sit-in tactic ultimately succeeded not because of
its moral force but because it cost businesses lost sales. Courtesy Richmond Times-Dispatch. |
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Sit-in, Farmville, 1963
In 1963 deputies forcibly removed sit-in protesters in front of the
College Shoppe Restaurant on Main Street in Farmville. Adhering to Jim Crow laws, management refused to serve blacks.
Courtesy Richmond Times-Dispatch. |
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Lunch counter sit-in, Richmond, 1960
On February 20, 1960, after marching "from the campus on Lombardy Street,
down Chamberlayne Avenue, to Woolworth's department store on Broad Street,"
a group of Virginia Union University students walked in, filled the thirty-four seats at the lunch
counter, and patiently waited to be served. In response, management then closed the store.
Courtesy Valentine Richmond History Center. |
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Protesting department stores in Richmond, 1960
In 1960 African Americans picketed both Thalhimers and Miller
and Rhoads, Richmond's leading department stores. Picketers encouraged patrons to engage in
"selective buying," which was essentially a boycott of the store. Courtesy Valentine Richmond History Center. |
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Protesting in Richmond
Picketers outside Thalhimers Department Store in Richmond
urged blacks not to buy at a store that denied them the right to eat at its restaurants.
Courtesy Valentine Richmond History Center. |
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Police with dogs at a Richmond demonstration
Policemen monitored the demonstration outside Thalhimers Department Store in Richmond.
Courtesy Richmond Times-Dispatch. |
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Student protest, Richmond, 1960
More than thirty-five Virginia Union University students were
arrested at Thalhimers department store in Richmond on February 22, 1960. This marked the first
large-scale arrests in connection with the surge of protests that swept the South over the issue
of equal access to public accommodations. Courtesy Richmond Times-Dispatch. |
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Woman protesting in Richmond
The sign carried by this woman reads: "If You Disregard Our Pickets And Shop In
"JIM CROW" STORES YOU DESERVE TO BE TREATED AS An Inferior." Courtesy Richmond Times-Dispatch. |
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Televised debate, December 6, 1960
"Are Sit-in Strikes Justifiable?" was the topic of a December 6, 1960 televised
debate between James J. Kilpatrick, influential editor of the Richmond News Leader, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Civil Rights sit-ins were inspired by the largely successful labor sit-ins at automotive plants in the 1930s and they
were in accord with King's philosophy of non-violent resistance to oppression. Courtesy Richmond Times-Dispatch. |
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