Sit-In Demonstration Sites

Sit-In Demonstration Sites. Markers Project. , The Sit-In Demonstration Sites Markers Project preserves an important part of Louisville’s history. Designed by nationally recognized sculptor Ed Hamilton, each marker bears a logo depicting student protesters to symbolize the civil rights movement in Louisville, the South and the nation in the 1960s., Fourth Street was Louisville’s primary corridor of restaurants, department stores and theaters. Through the 1950s, most white-owned establishments downtown excluded African Americans or treated them differently as customers - for example, denying them the opportunity to try on clothes, to sit at lunch counters and to enter movie theaters. By winter 1961, small-scale demonstrations and efforts to secure legislation opening all such facilities had failed., The stirrings of protest activity that swept the South in the 1960s inspired African American teenagers who became the “foot soldiers” of the struggle against discrimination in public accommodations in Louisville. Mass demonstrations in spring 1961, a voter registration drive and a campaign to unseat an unsympathetic mayor and elect a new board of aldermen ultimately led to the passage of the public accommodations ordinance - the first such law in the South., Today, many of the businesses where demonstrations were held are gone, have relocated or been torn down. In the absence of a physical presence, these markers will preserve the history of the civil rights movement and tell the little known story of one of Louisville’s greatest achievements., Marker Locations , Walgreens Drugstore, 526 South Fourth Street , Stewart’s Dry Goods, 510 South Fourth Street , Kaufman-Straus, 427 South Fourth Street , Blue Boar Cafeterias, 410 West Walnut Street, 644 South Fourth Street , Kentucky Theater, 651 South Fourth Street , Mary Anderson Theater, 610 South Fourth Street , Penthouse/United Artist Theater, 625 South Fourth Street , Rialto Theater, 616 South Fourth Street , Brown Hotel, 335 West Broadway , Brown Theater, 315 West Broadway, “The average citizen can…bring change in his community by peaceful demonstrations and political action.” - Anne Braden letter to the editor, the Courier-Journal, May 30, 1963, Dedicated to the memory of Dr. J. Blaine Hudson (September 8, 1949 - January 5, 2013) , September 30, 2013