The Tallahassee Lunch Counter Sit-Ins

The Tallahassee Lunch Counter Sit-Ins. Tallahassee - Leon County Civil Rights Heritage Walk. Lunch counters at dime stores, such as Woolworth and McCrory's, offered downtown shoppers a reasonably priced place to sit and eat but only for white patrons. On February 13, 1960, eight Florida A&M University (FAMU) students and two African-American high school students sat down at the Woolworth lunch counter and asked to be served. They took this action in sympathy with the sit-ins in Greensboro, North Carolina. After their request was denied, the students remained seated in silent protest. After two hours of heckling from white patrons, the store manager closed the lunch counter and the crowd dispersed before police arrived. For the next two months, members of the local chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), interracial onganization that espoused a strategy of moral suasion based on the teaching of Mohandas Gandhi, held several more sit-ins. Patricia and Priscilla Stephens, sisters and FAMU students, were particularly important in coordinating these efforts. Despite being denounced by Florida's political leaders as engaging in illegal and incendiary acts, students persisted in their efforts to expose the immorality of racial discrimination even though it meant subjecting themselves to physical and verbal abuse. They received moral, emotional, and financial support from Tallahassee civil rights organizations and African American churches. On March 17, Judge John Rudd found the first group of eleven arrestees guilty of disturbing the peace and sentenced them each to pay a $300 fine or spend sixty days in jail. In an unprecedented move, they chose jail over bail. Three years of continued economic pressure led downtown business owners to desegregate their lunch counters. The sit-ins inspired the continued use of nonviolent-direct action to confront everyday injustices and inequality.