1958 July 19

1958 Wichita Sit-In Challenges Segregation

 

A local NAACP chapter on this day sponsored a sit-in in Wichita, Kansas, challenging racially segregated public accommodations. The sit-in was successful, and local lunch counters were desegregated on August 11, 1958.

The Wichita sit-in is significant because the conventional history of the Civil Rights Movement presents the sit-in movement challenging segregated lunch counters and other public accommodations as beginning in Greensboro, North Carolina, on February 1, 1960. In fact, there were a number of earlier sit-ins.

Particularly important, see the first known sit-ins on April 17, 1943 Washington, DC); May 8, 1943 (Chicago); and April 22, 1944 (Washington, DC). Additional sit-ins occurred on January 20, 1955 (Baltimore); July 19, 1958 (Wichita); and August 19, 1958 (Oklahoma City). There were probably others in the 1950s that did not receive much publicity.

The significance of the February 1960 sit-in is that it launched a national sit-in movement that swept the South and transformed the Civil Rights Movement.

Read about the pre-1960 sit-ins: http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis60.htm#1960sitins

Learn more about the Wichita sit-ins: http://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/wichita-students-sit-us-civil-rights-1958

Read more: Iwan W. Morgan and Philip Davies, From Sit-ins to SNCC: The Student Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s (2012)

Visit the National Museum of African American History and Culture here

Find a Day

Go
Abortion Rights ACLU african-americans Alice Paul anti-communism Anti-Communist Hysteria Birth Control Brown v. Board of Education Censorship CIA Civil Rights Civil Rights Act of 1964 Cold War Espionage Act FBI First Amendment Fourteenth Amendment freedom of speech Free Speech Gay Rights Hate Speech homosexuality Hoover, J. Edgar HUAC Japanese American Internment King, Dr. Martin Luther Ku Klux Klan Labor Unions Lesbian and Gay Rights Loyalty Oaths McCarthy, Sen. Joe New York Times Obscenity Police Misconduct Same-Sex Marriage Separation of Church and State Sex Discrimination Smith Act Spying Spying on Americans Vietnam War Voting Rights Voting Rights Act of 1965 War on Terror Watergate White House Women's Rights Women's Suffrage World War I World War II Relocation Camps

Topics

Tell Us What You Think

We want to hear your comments, criticisms and suggestions!