To Sit or Not to Sit: The Supreme Court of the United States and the Civil Rights Movement in the Upper South

Abstract

To Sit or Not to Sit: The Supreme Court of the United States and the Civil Rights Movement in the Upper South PETER WALLENSTEIN* In the early 1960s, Ford T. Johnson Jr. was an undergraduate at Virginia Union University, a black college in Richmond, Virginia. So was his sister, Elizabeth. On Saturday, February 20, 1960, they and dozens of classmates headed downtown to participate in sit-ins directed at segregated seating arrangements at the eating venues in the department stores that lined Broad Street. What motivated the Johnsons and the other black students who participated in the sit-in that Saturday was a commitment to bring segregation to an end—beginning with the integration ofdowntown Richmond’s lunch counters. Whetherthe racial discrimination imposed in those stores reflected the express mandates of state laws and city ordinances or the private decisions of various enterprises did not matter to the demonstrators. Even if integrated service had been within the law, management at lunch counters and other establishments, relying on trespass laws, would still have called upon public authorities to eject demonstrators seeking desegregation. From that February in 1960 until passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, sit-ins took place across the South. Some led to desegrega­ tion without arrests, but in every former Con­ federate and border state, demonstrators were roundedup and arrested. Dozens ofcasesmade their way to the Supreme Court of the United States, addressing such issues as equal pro­ tection, due process, property rights, and state action. The Civil Rights Movement Most studies of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s have focused on Deep South communities—notably Montgomery, 146 JOURNAL OF SUPREME COURT HISTORY On February 1, 1960, a group of black students from North Carolina A & T College who were refused service at a luncheon counter reserved for white customers staged a sit-in strike at the Woolworth store in Greensboro, North Carolina. Ronald Martin, Robert Patterson, and Mark Martin are shown here seated at the lunch counter, as they remained throughout the day. Alabama, the cradle ofthe Confederacy, where activists such as Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. operated and institutions and organizations such as Dexter Avenue Bap­ tist Church and the Montgomery Improve­ ment Association fought for change. By con­ trast, this study highlights an Upper South community, Richmond, Virginia, in the early 1960s. On Monday, February 1, 1960, four young men, students at the North Carolina Agricul­ tural and Technical College, staged a widely publicized sit-in at a Woolworth Store lunch counter in Greensboro.1 Sit-ins had been oc­ curring for some time throughout the South, and preparations were underway for a protest in Nashville, Tennessee.2 But the Greensboro one was the first to capture the imagina­ tion of large numbers of Americans, particu­ larly black southerners. The Greensboro lunch counter sit-in was replicated in towns and cities across the South, including Atlanta, Georgia and Tallahassee, Florida.3 Before the month of February was out, sit-ins had taken place in several communi­ ties in Virginia, too. At first the protesters focused, as the Greensboro students had, on the practice of white stores excluding African Americans from eating facilities. Soon student protesters targeted other places where whites but not blacks could have access and gained widespread support among black residents of theircommunities. As inthe Deep South, racial segregation came under siege in the Upper South as well. The Richmond Sit-ins Begin The North Carolina sit-ins began on Febru­ ary 1. Black college students in Richmond did not take action for nearly three weeks after that, but they did not sit idle: they were carefully planning their own protest.4 On Saturday, February 20, at about 9:00 a.m., approximately 200 students converged on downtown Richmond. The group went first TO SIT OR NOT TO SIT 147 to the Woolworth’s store, on Broad Street at Fifth. Ignoring the small counter at the back of the store set aside for black customers, they occupied the thirty-four seats in the sec­ tion reserved for whites. Store officials quickly closed the white section. The students contin­ ued to sit, talking among themselves or read­ ing...