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