Negro College Students' Participation in Sit-Ins

Socioeconomic and legal changes in the position of southern Negroes have been accompanied by a changing pattern of race relations and a new attitude on the part of Negro leaders. Data from a closedanswer questionnaire administered to students in three Negro colleges in North Carolina support the hypothesis that sit-in protests are less indicative of social alienation among Negroes than of their identification with or positive reference to the white middle class. NTHEPAST six years dramatic changes have occurred in the pattern of Negro-white relations in the South. Outside the sphere of perhaps the three most significant demonstrations of the change have been the bus l955-56, the Tallahassee bus boycott of 1958, and the student sit-ins which began in February 1960, when four freshmen from & T' in F' W' Woolworth's Greensboro department store and sat down a t the lunch counter. Although many white southerners have attempted to ascribe these anti-segregation protests to the work of outside agitators and local malcontents, most thoughtful analysts have emphasized (1) a shift in the prevailing attitude in the Negro community from one of complacency and accommodation to one of deep involvement in efforts to alter their second-class citizenship, and (2) a shift in Negro leadership from those oriented toward accommodation to those oriented toward reform and substantial gains for the Negro corn* A paper read at the twenty-fourth annual meeting of the Southern Sociological Society, Miami Beach, Florida, April 1961. munity. Writing about Negro protest leaders in Tallahassee, Killian and Smith observe: . . . the "new" leaders are becoming permanent leaders not because of the attractiveness of their personalities or their skill at organizing, but rather because they adhere rigorously to the form of militant leadership which is becoming the trend for Negroes throughout the United states.' Similar observations have been by others.2 Some of the literature on mass movements concerns political activity in the lower middle and lower class and suggests that the protest demonstrations and the militancy may be expressions of profound alienation and disaffection-that the adherents are people hostile both toward the outgroup (whites) and toward themselves. The psychological function of the movement would be 'Lewis M. Killian and Charles U. Smith, "Negro Protest Leaders in a Southern Community," Social Forces, Vol. 38, No. 3 (March 19601, P. 257. E. '(The Negro Revolt Against 'The Negro Leaders,' " Harper's, June, 1960, p. 41, ff; James Baldwin, "A Negro Assays the Negro Mood," The New York Times Magazine, March 12, 1961, p. 25 ff. Published in SOCIAL FORCES 40:3 (March 1962), pp. 215-220.