The year 1960 was an important one throughout the South. It witnessed the beginning of the sit-in movement. Sit-ins began in Greensboro, North Carolina. They spread quickly and eventually included such places as Rock Hill and Orangeburg in South Carolina. What happened in the Orangeburg sit-ins sheds light on many key aspects of the Civil Rights Movement.
First, What’s a Sit-In?
Sit-ins became one of the key protest tactics of the Civil Rights Movement. It involved people (often students) sitting quietly and politely at segregated lunch counters until they received service. These were mainly African American people, although whites sometimes joined out of sympathy.
One point was to call attention to the segregation. Another was to protest without disrupting anyone else in a store, preventing claims that protestors were inhibiting normal business. (It was common for departments stores to have lunch counters at that time in the South.)
Let’s be clear, however, that a sit-in was not a passive act. Many times, the people conducting sit-ins faced taunting, harassment, police intimidation, and sometimes outright violence. Arrests sometimes followed. Conducting a sit-in properly required outstanding bravery. Most who did it received training in nonviolence, knowing the risks.
The Situation Behind the Orangeburg Sit-Ins
Orangeburg was a town of about 14,000 that happened to have two colleges. One was South Carolina State College (SCSC) and the other was Claflin University. SCSC was publicly funded and dominated by the white power structure. Claflin, the oldest Historically Black college in South Carolina, was a privately funded school. Students at both began to organize sit-ins of their own once they heard about events in Greensboro in early February.
After receiving training in nonviolent protest, the students moved on the Kress store in downtown Orangeburg. Kress had a segregated lunch counter. The students tried negotiation first. The store rebuffed them. On February 25 and 26 they begin their sit-in. But Kress removed the stools and closed its lunch counter.
On March 1 about 400 students marched to protest the segregation at Kress and other stores in Orangeburg. The police dispersed them. The students remained peaceful throughout. Following this, things grew quiet for about two weeks. Not because the stores gave in, but because they stayed closed hoping the student movement would fizzle.
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The Power Structure during the Orangeburg Sit-Ins
But plenty took place behind the scenes to destroy the student movement. The president of SCSC, Benner Turner, had already banned SCSC from sponsoring any chapters of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In early March Turner cracked down further. He banned demonstrations “which disrupt the normal College routine.” It was classic racist Southerner work. He banned actions with wording so nebulous that he could apply the ban to nearly any activity.
That was not all. The city council banned picketing, First Amendment be damned. The local newspaper did its part, too. The paper declared that outside agitators, probably communists, had inflamed the normally peaceful students into their misguided actions.
This was also a classic racist Southerner move—equate civil rights with communism. And they proclaimed incessantly that outsiders had caused all the problems. In the racist Southern mindset, this had to be true. The “good” African Americans realized that segregation was in their own interest. Blacks were childlike but happy under segregation. Problems only surfaced when outsiders, ignorant of what was best for Southern blacks, got involved and stirred up trouble. All this was nonsense, of course. But conservative racist Southerners, which was most Southern whites, believed it without reservation.
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March 15, the Big Day
The stores of Orangeburg, South Carolina tried to reopen on March 15, hoping to continue business as usual. But the students were ready. By this time, 1,000 were on hand to march to nonviolently protest segregation. And this time, they did not disperse when ordered by police, realizing their whole movement would die if they did so.
The police proved ready. They opened up with fire hoses and tear gas. Like in Birmingham a few years later, bodies were pinned to walls and sent flying down streets by jets of water. The students remained nonviolent even as police arrested 388 of them. Problem was, the local jail had nowhere near that capacity.
The police improvised an outdoor stockade, an eerie echo of the slave pens of antebellum South Carolina. It was forty degrees, the students were soaked by fire hoses, and it began raining, too. When sympathetic onlookers tried passing them blankets, police arrested the onlookers. (Perhaps you’re thinking it’s a relief that this doesn’t happen today. But if you think so, you aren’t paying attention. Recall recent laws passed by racist conservative Southerners criminalizing sharing water with people waiting in line to vote, for instance.)
The Trial
Treatment of the students made national news. Some faculty at SCSC and Claflin even pledged their own property for collateral as bail. The NAACP provided an attorney, Matthew Perry. The students were fined $50 and convicted of breaching the peace. All appealed. (The Supreme Court eventually upheld their appeal and ruled their protest lawful.)
Meanwhile, the racist conservative judge hearing the case tossed Perry himself into jail. His offense? “Pursuing his case vigorously.”
Everyone in authority came down against the students. President Turner of SCSC announced a policy of expulsion for anyone who continued demonstrating, First Amendment be damned. On May 5 South Carolina passed a law criminalizing “refusing to leave a place of business when asked to do so by the management.”
The Outcome of the Orangeburg Sit-Ins
The sit-in movement in Orangeburg, South Carolina failed. Although the students had their charges cleared, everything else conspired to ruin their efforts. Many faced the choice of protesting for justice or forfeiting their college education. Segregation continued in Orangeburg. State and local authorities passed all manner of ridiculous laws to defeat the students’ efforts. The NAACP and the student organizations that organized the protests quarreled over means. The protest movement lost its momentum.
But 1960 was not the end of events in Orangeburg, South Carolina. Read on to the next post to learn how things got worse.
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