Marshall, Texas Sit-in -- 1960
“Civil Rights” is a
term that did not evolve out of black culture,
but, rather, out of American law. As
such, it is a term of limitation.
The lunch counter sit-ins of 1960
launched the direct-action phase of the Civil Rights Movement. To the
students who took part in the protests, civil rights work entailed
litigation and lobbying. For the thousands of students who joined the
sit-in movement, reliance on their elders, litigation, and patience –
the stuff of civil rights, traditionally understood – was
precisely what they wanted to avoid.
Christopher W. Schmidt, author of
“Divided by Law: The Sit-ins and the Role of the Courts in the
Civil Rights Movement” and professor at Chicago-Kent College of
Law, explains …
“The students who launched the
sit-ins explicitly defined their protest as an alternative to
litigation-based reform tactics. Leading civil rights lawyers, in
contrast, urged the students to rely on the judicial process. White
business owners and local officials also divided over whether
criminal prosecution of the protesters would best serve their
interests.
“These divergent attitudes toward the
courts derived from differences of strategy and ideology. They were
also affected by developments in Fourteenth Amendment doctrine: by
1960, whether the non-discrimination principle of Brown v. Board of
Education reached (or would soon reach) privately owned public
accommodations was an open question. Conflict over the appropriate
role of the courts ultimately worked to the students’ advantage. It
contributed to their collective identity as a protest movement,
helped secure outside support, and divided their opponents.”
Beginnings
The Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR)
and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) conducted sit-ins as early
as the 1940s. Ernest Calloway refers to Bernice Fisher as "Godmother
of the restaurant 'sit-in' technique." Fisher was among the
co-founders of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in 1942 in
Chicago, Illinois.
In 1942 CORE's six founders followed
the nonviolent organizing techniques outlined in Krishnalal
Shridharani's War Without Violence. This was Shridharani's
doctoral thesis at Columbia, and within the year had become a
national bestseller. Shridharani, an intimate of Gandhi, who had been
jailed in the Salt March, had codified Gandhi's techniques.
In August 1939, African-American
attorney Samuel Wilbert Tucker organized a sit-in at the
then-segregated Alexandria, Virginia, library. Congress of Industrial
Organizations (CIO) labor delegates had a brief, spontaneous lunch
counter sit-in during their 1947 Columbus, Ohio convention.
Fire hoses in Marshall
The 1960s
The civil rights sit-in demonstrations
most of us know were born on February 1, 1960. Four African American
college students walked up to a whites-only lunch counter at the
local Woolworth's store in Greensboro, North Carolina, and asked for
coffee. When service was refused, the students sat patiently. Despite
threats and intimidation, the students sat quietly and waited to be
served.
The group became known as the
Greensboro Four – Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, Ezell Blair Jr.
and David Richmond. They sat near an older white woman on the
silver-backed stools. The students had no need to talk; theirs was no
spontaneous act. Their actions had been meticulously planned, down to
buying a few school supplies and toiletries and keeping their
receipts as proof that the lunch counter was the only part of the
store where racial segregation still ruled.
Reflecting on the event in 2010, McCain
said, "The best feeling of my life was sitting on that dumb
stool. "I felt so relieved," he added. "I felt so at
peace and so self-accepted at that very moment. Nothing has ever
happened to me since then that topped that good feeling of being
clean and fully accepted and feeling proud of me."
Achievements during this phase of the
Civil Rights Movement were The Civil Rights Act of 1964, that banned
discrimination based on “race, color, religion, or national origin”
in employment practices and public accommodations; the Voting Rights
Act of 1965, that restored and protected voting rights; and the Fair
Housing Act of 1968, that banned discrimination in the sale or rental
of housing. This movement inspired present and future generations to
take action for their civil rights.
Local Paper
I found an article in the Portsmouth
Times about a sit-in in Marshall Texas in April 1960. It was
interesting to read about reactions at the time. Of course the
“Thurgood Marshall” mentioned in the article would soon become
President John F. Kennedy's appointment to the United States Court of
Appeals for the Second Circuit (1961). Four years later, President
Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Marshall as the United States Solicitor
General. In 1967, Johnson successfully nominated Marshall to succeed
retiring Associate Justice Tom C. Clark on the Supreme Court.
Marshall retired during the administration of President George H. W.
Bush.
One surprising detail of the article
mentioned a plan for a boycott against blacks. In this town, that may
not have benefited white business owners. After all, Marshall was
unique in that blacks held the majority. However, that was a majority
despite a horrible past.
During the late 19th and early 20th
centuries, children of both races were forced into accepting the law
of racial segregation in the state. In Marshall, a blacks were being
excluded from politics and tensions rose, lynchings of black men took
place, a form of extrajudicial punishment and social control.
Beginning in the late 19th century, a total of 14 African-American
men were lynched in the county, the third-highest total in the state.
Suspects were often brought to Marshall
for their murders, or taken from the county jail before trial and
hanged in the courthouse square for maximum effect of terrorizing the
black population. Between October 1903 and August 1917 at least
twelve people were lynched in Marshall, all black men. Not all
instances of lynching were reported by authorities, so this number is
likely an undercount.
Here is the Times article for
your local 1960 connection ...
“Merchants Act To Counteract
Boycott Threat”
Associated Press
Merchants moved swiftly today to
counteract a threatened boycott by integration-seeking Negroes in one
Texas city while a proposal for the mass withdrawal of students at
Louisiana University appeared to be losing ground.
At Greensboro, N.C., where sit-down
demonstrations began Feb 1, a Negro leader said students have set
their elders an example. He urged adults to stop “sitting on the
sidelines wringing your hands.”
Merchants at Marshall, Tex., called a
meeting Tuesday night to talk about “the situation that confronts
us.” One unidentified merchant said the possibility of an economic
boycott against Negroes might be discussed.
Negroes last week threatened boycott of
local stores after more than 70 were arrested for integration
demonstrations, lunch counter sit-downs, and picketing. All have been
released on bail.
Courthouse Square merchants admitted
their business was off sharply Saturday. Marshall is a city of about
30,000 that takes pride in old South traditions.
At Baton Rouge, La., J.J. Hedgemon,
dean of registration at all-Negro Southern University said less than
200 students had left. The registration office was opened Sunday to
permit withdrawals.
Thurgood Marshall, chief attorney of
the National Assn. For the Advancement of Colored People, told 1,000
Negroes attending a meeting at Bennett College in Greensboro, N.C.,
that “the world will never condone oppression of minorities.”
He said business firms catering to the
general public are not private property. If the owners maintain they
are private, the Negro should “make it private. Close it up,” he
said.
Students representing 17 colleges and
universities in seven states recommended a South-wide organization
for promoting the sit-down movement and urged extended picketing and
boycotting. They were attending a college workshop at interracial
Highlander Folk School at Montagle, Tenn.
Portsmouth Times – Monday,
April 4, 1960
Marshall, Texas in 1960
Global Nonviolent Action Database
Researching the Marshall sit-in for
more information, I found an article from the Swarthmore College
archives that details the story. The plan to demonstrate by sit-in in Marshall,
Texas, actually pre-dated the Greensboro sit-in. Dr. King was even
instrumental in the planning stages there in Texas. One also may note
the use of fire hoses to disperse a crowd of protesters … and, the
mention of attack dogs. (Although I believe the vicious animals were not used
on the crowd.) How these things remind a person of later conflicts in
Birmingham, Alabama (1963). Also, take note of the removal of lunch
counters as you read the account.
Here is the
article …
Marshall, Texas,
despite having a black majority, practiced public and private racial
segregation like most of the South in the 1950’s. The town included
two historically black colleges: Bishop College and Wiley College.
On 19 December 1959, Bishop College
professor Dr. Doxie Wilkerson, along with Wiley College students Joel
Rucker, Roosevelt Peabody, and George Holmes, attended a meeting of
the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP). The goal was to begin to campaign for desegregation by
conducting sit-ins in the town of Marshall and other cities
throughout the South. This plan pre-dated the Greensboro, N.C. sit-in
on 1 February 1960 that famously launched the sit-in movement of the
early 1960s.
On 16 January 1960 Wilkerson began
recruiting students at both black colleges to train in sit-in
tactics. In February a number of campuses launched sit-in campaigns
in North Carolina and elsewhere. On 17 March Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr. spoke at Wiley College about the right to protest and sit-in.
After King’s speech students
organized more intensely for their campaign. They established
procedures for forming groups and taking shifts in the sit-in.
On Friday 26 March, nine students and
Wilkerson began the sit-in at a Woolworth’s lunch counter. The
manager closed the store in 30 minutes and reopened the store once
the group left. Another group of students re-entered the store and
stayed until closing. During the sit-in other students showed support
with signs outside. On campus they sang to lift their spirits.
On 29 March, students staged their
second day of sit-ins. Police took 25 students for questioning and
released them with the warning that if the sit-ins continued police
would begin arrests.
The sit-ins continued the next day.
Police arrested 20 students at three different lunch counters for
interfering with businesses.
In response students gathered in front
of the courthouse and sang. A crowd of white people gathered, and in
a few hours grew restless. In an effort to clear the group, the city
fire department unleashed hoses of high pressure water at the
demonstrators and several bystanders. Police arrested 37 more
students in the process.
On 31 March, a crowd of 350 students
met at the bell tower of Wiley College for prayer and songs in
support of those still in jail. Later that day, the student leaders
announced a boycott of white merchants.
Meanwhile, Texas Governor Price Daniel
ordered an investigation of Dr. Wilkerson after discovering his
former ties to the Communist Party. Within a week the Bishop College
president fired Wilkerson.
The next day rumors of an imminent
parade of civil rights demonstrators brought large crowds of white
people, both local and non-local, downtown. The parade never
happened, but the crowd remained tense without demonstrators. Several
men from out of town brought attack dogs to unleash on the
demonstrators, and police promptly forced the men to leave.
By the beginning of April the number of
students participating in the sit-ins was declining. On 2 April the
presidents of both Wiley and Bishop College released statements
calling for the end of demonstrations.
Bishop College students withdrew first,
and Wiley College students followed the next day, ending the sit-in
campaign on 3 April. Discussion about a boycott continued, but a lack
of support from the greater black community in Marshall left the
boycott ineffective.
On 7 April, trials began for 35
students arrested earlier, including testimony regarding Wilkerson’s
involvement in the sit-ins. Students trials went on for months due to
appeals until 16 August, when the students’ attorney and a student
died in a car accident and the city dismissed all cases.
Over the summer, Wiley College
president fired the entire teaching staff except for those who
supported the administration during the sit-ins. Businesses quietly
removed all lunch counters in Marshall, and more than 35 years passed
before the lunch counters came back.
Sources
“Black students sit-in for U.S. civil
rights, Marshall, Texas, 1960.” Global Nonviolent Action Database
A project of Swarthmore College.
“Divided by Law: The Sit-Ins and the
Role of the Courts in the Civil Rights Movement.” Law and History
Review 93. Chicago-Kent College of Law Research Paper No. 2013-45.
2015.
“Merchants Act
to Counteract Boycott Threat.” Portsmouth Times. Associated
Press. April 4, 1960.
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