A History of the Civil Rights Movement

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A History of the Civil Rights Movement

Nash told the judge that rather than pay the fine, the students would go to jail to protest the injustice of segregation. The judge sentenced the students to 30 days in jail. Nashville Mayor Ben West agreed to free the stu dents if they stopped the sit-ins. He promised to form a racially integrated group to decide how to end segregation. The students agreed to not sit-in at lunch counters. But when the mayor’s group did lit tle about segregation, students resumed the sit-ins. They also boycotted stores and protested in front of

Diane Nash

the courthouse. In the morning of April 19, 1960, a bomb exploded at the Nashville home of Alexander Looby, a lawyer who had represented students arrest ed in the sit-ins. Fortunately, Looby and his wife were unhurt. The next day, thousands of angry students marched to Nashville’s city hall to con front Mayor West. As television cameras and reporters watched, Diane Nash asked, “Mayor West, do you feel it is wrong to [treat a person unfair ly just because of] race or color?” West answered yes, that unfair treatment was wrong. The headline on the front page of the Nashville Tennessean the following day announced, “Mayor Says Integrate Counters.” Within three weeks, managers of six downtown lunch counters allowed African Americans to sit wherever they pleased. It took Woolworth’s management much longer to change its segregation policy. Six months after the first Greensboro sit-in, on July 25, 1960, Woolworth officials ordered its store chains to desegregate. But the power of the sit-ins reached further. Similar protests that occurred in nine states even tually led to the passage of legislation that ended segregation policies in restau

rants, theaters, and concert halls. FREEDOM RIDERS

In April 1960 Diane Nash and John Lewis attended a meeting organized by an SCLC official named Ella Baker. A supporter of grassroots organiz