A sit-in or sit-down is a form of direct action that involves one or more people occupying an area for a protest, often to promote political, social, or economic change. In sit-ins, protesters usually seat themselves at a strategic location. They remain until they are evicted, usually by force, or arrested, or until their requests have been met. Then , they start to boycott places. A boycott is an act of voluntarily abstaining from using, buying, or dealing with a person, organization, or country as an expression of protest, usually for social or political reasons
The Greensboro sit-ins were a series of nonviolent protests in Greensboro, North CArolina in 1960 which led to the Woolworthdepartment store chain reversing its policy of racial segregation in the Southern United States.While not the first sit-ins of the African-American Civil Rights Movement, the Greensboro sit-ins were an instrumental action, leading to increased national sentiment at a crucial period in US History.
Many people know the story of Rosa Parks. On Thursday, Dec. 1, 1955, after a long day at work as a seamstress, Mrs. Parks boarded a bus in Montgomery to go home. She sat in the fifth row with three other blacks, the farthest row forward blacks could legally occupy. As the bus filled up along the route, however, more whites entered the bus. Eventually, one white was left standing. According to Alabama law during the '50s, blacks and whites couldn't occupy the same row. When told by the bus driver to give up the row to the white man, three of the blacks left for the back of the bus, but Mrs. Parks simply refused. She was quickly arrested and sent to jail.Mrs. Parks' arrest led to the famous Montgomery Bus Boycott.
The Selma to Montgomery marches, also known as Bloody Sunday and the two marches that followed, were marches and protests held in 1965 that marked the political and emotional peak of the American Civil Rights Movement. All three were attempts to march from Selma to Montgomery where the Alabama capitol is located.The first march took place on March 7, 1965 — "Bloody Sunday" — when 600 marchers, were attacked by state and local police with billy clubs and tear gas. The second march took place March 9; police and marchers stood off against one another, but when the troopers stepped aside to let them pass, Dr. Martin Luther King turned the marchers back around to go back to the church. The third march started March 16.The route is memorialized as the Selma To Montgomery Voting Rights Trail, and is a U.S. National Historic Trail.