WSB-TV (Television station : Atlanta, Ga.)

Description

In this WSB newsfilm clip from 1958, African Americans hold a sit-in at a lunch counter to protest segregation, possibly in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.The clip begins outside a building, with the camera facing the doorway. Cars are parked along the street, and people appear to gather in a crowd near the doors of the store. Inside the building, a policeman in shirtsleeves stands among the store goods, and later a white waitress leans against a counter. African Americans sit on stools along the lunch counter, and behind them two policemen converse. Another white waitress wipes down the counter in front of a girl; down the lunch counter, every seat appears taken, but no one has anything in front of them. The clip ends with two boys at the lunch counter sitting near a man who appears to be their father. One boy drinks from a glass, and another younger boy appears to eat something out of a bowl.The direct action technique of sitting at a lunch counter until given service was used by a handful of African Americans during the 1950s to protest segregation. In 1958, sit-ins were held by local chapters of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Wichita, Kansas, and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Both campaigns were eventually successful; in Oklahoma, where the sit-ins spread to Enid and Tulsa, nearly forty stores across the state had integrated their lunch counters by the end of the year. Sit-in campaigns the following year in Miami, Florida,...

Record Contributed By

Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection

Record Harvested From

Digital Library of Georgia