3.10 Freedom Now

The Sit-In Movement and Student Activism

In 1960, four Black college students launched the Greensboro sit-ins, sparking a wave of nonviolent direct action across the South. This energy led to the founding of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which organized young people to challenge segregation through sit-ins, Freedom Rides, and voter registration drives, emphasizing grassroots leadership.

Freedom Summer and Voting Rights

Freedom Summer (1964) brought Black and white volunteers to Mississippi to register Black voters and establish Freedom Schools. The violence faced by activists, including the murder of three workers, drew national attention and helped push forward the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Diverging Strategies and Growing Militancy

By the mid-1960s, frustration with slow progress led some activists toward Black Power, emphasizing self-defense, racial pride, and economic independence over integrationist nonviolence. Figures like Stokely Carmichael popularized the phrase, marking a shift within SNCC and the broader movement away from Martin Luther King Jr.'s earlier philosophy.

Key terms

Greensboro sit-ins

1960 protest where four Black college students sat at a segregated lunch counter, sparking a wave of student sit-ins across the South.

SNCC

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; organized young activists for sit-ins, Freedom Rides, and voter registration.

Freedom Summer

1964 campaign in Mississippi to register Black voters and run Freedom Schools; marked by violent resistance, including activist murders.

Voting Rights Act of 1965

Law banning discriminatory voting practices, passed after national outrage over civil rights violence, including in Selma.

Black Power

Movement emphasizing racial pride, self-defense, and economic independence, popularized by Stokely Carmichael in the mid-1960s.

Try an AP-style question

Juneteenth commemorates…

1. Abraham Lincoln's birthday each year
2. news of freedom reaching Texas in 1865
3. ratification of the 15th Amendment
4. the first shots of the Civil War