How to Protest

Individual Communitywide

Civil Disobedience: A group's refusal to obey a law because they believe the law is immoral. A tactic used in protest movements by marginalized people, including Af Am in the Civil Rights Movement.

Sit-In: A form of nonviolent civil disobedience in which demonstrators occupy seats and refuse to move. Civil Rights activists used this tactic to great success. Popularized their oppression to world.

•Before Brown , the Civil Rights movement

(mostly the NAACP) was focused on legal

action, trying to get laws changed through

courts.

•As the 1960s began, the Civil Rights

movement got a different focus. It was

made up of mass action by communities

against discrimination.

Mass Action vs Legislative Action

Nonviolent Actions Used by the CR

Movement

Civil Disobedience

A group's refusal to obey a law because they

believe the law is immoral (as in protest against

discrimination); African Americans used this kind

of direct action to force a change to the laws.

Sit-In

A form of civil disobedience that involves one or

more persons nonviolently occupying an area to

promote political or social change; a primary

action used in the Civil Rights movement.

Greensboro, South CarolinaGreensboro, South Carolina

Protest Marches in MS, 1960

What does nonviolent resistance

mean?

Nonviolent Resistance

The practice of achieving political goals

through symbolic protests, civil

disobedience, and other methods, and

without using violence. Primary strategy in

the Civil Rights movement.

Protests continue outside a segregated cafeteria, Greensboro, SC, 1960.

Woolworth Sit-In, Jackson, MS, 1963

Emmett Till• In 1955, a 14 year old boy said “Bye,

baby” to a white woman in Mississippi. In

response, he was brutally murdered.

• This event shocked the world, and

showed them the true nature of Southern

racism.

• 50000 people viewed his body in an open

casket, and magazines like Jet published

photos.

Trial’s Conclusion

• The all-male, all-white jury acquitted

 both defendants in only 67 minutes.

• One juror said, "If we hadn't stopped to

drink pop, it wouldn't have taken us too

long." 

• This outraged people throughout the

world and energized emerging CR

Movement.