Introduction : civil rights sit-ins and the rhetoric of protest / Sean Patrick O'Rourke & Leslie K. Pace -- Liminal protest : Eleanor Roosevelt's "sit-between" at the 1938 Southern Conference for Human Welfare / Melody Lehn -- "Our boys, our bonds, our brothers" : Pauli Murray and the Washington, D.C., sit-ins, 1943-1944 / David Miguel Molina -- Lunch counters and the public sphere : the St. Louis sit-in as an emerging counterpublic / Joshua D. Phillips -- From "dead wrong" to civil rights history : the Durham Royal Seven, Martin Luther King's 1960 "Fill up the jails" speech, and the rhetoric of visibility / Victoria J. Gallagher, Kenneth S. Zagacki & Jeffrey C. Swift -- The Nashville sit-ins : successful nonviolent direct action through rhetorical invention and advocacy / Judith D. Hoover -- Reading bodies, reading books : a rhetorical history of the 1960 Greenville, South Carolina, sit-ins / Sean Patrick O'Rourke -- Nothing new for Easter : rhetoric, collective action, and the Louisville sit-in movement / Stephen Schneider -- Suffer the little children : propriety and piety in the 1963 Birmingham, Alabama youth demonstrations for civil rights / Roseann M. Mandziuk -- The mustard man and the students' stand : analyzing images from the 1963 Jackson sit-in / William H. Lawson -- From sitting in to sitting out : Gloria Richardson and the 1963 Cambridge movement / Lindsay Harroff -- Wade in the water : African American and local news accounts of the 1964 Monson Motor Lodge swim-in / Rebecca Bridges Watts -- Televisuality and the performance of citizenship on NBC's "Sit-in" / Marilyn DeLaure -- Forgetting the 1960 Biloxi, Mississippi, wade-ins : collective memory, forgetting, and the politics of remembering protest / Casey Malone Maugh Funderburk & Wendy Atkins-Sayre -- Visualizing a civil rights archive : images of the sit-in at the counter and other objects / Diana I. Bowen -- Direct action, then and now : comparing the sit-ins and Occupy Wall Street / Jason Del Gandio -- The longest sit-in / David Worthington -- Afterword : chiseling at a fossilized memory : connections, questions, and implications / Keith D. Miller.
Summary:
"The sit-ins of the American civil rights movement were extraordinary acts of dissent in an age marked by protest. By sitting in at "whites only" lunch counters, libraries, swimming pools, and churches, young African Americans and their allies put their lives on the line, fully aware that their actions would almost inevitably incite hateful, violent responses from entrenched and increasingly desperate white segregationists. The simplicity of the act, coupled with the dignity and grace exhibited by participants, lent to the sit-in movement's sanctity and peaceful power. These cohesive essays from leading scholars offer a new appraisal of the origins, growth, and legacy of the sit-ins, largely ignored in scholarly literature. By focusing on the persuasive power of demanding space, the contributors articulate the ways in which the protestors' battle for basic civil rights shaped social practices, laws, and the national dialogue"-- Provided by publisher.
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