sit-ins

1. A form of nonviolent protest, employed during the 1960s in the civil rights movement and later in the movement against the Vietnam War . In a sit-in, demonstrators occupy a place open to the public, such as a racially segregated ( see segregation ) lunch counter or bus station, and then refuse to leave. Sit-ins were designed to provoke arrest and thereby gain attention for the demonstrators' cause.

Notes

The civil rights leader Martin Luther King , Jr., defended such tactics as sit-ins in his “ Letter from Birmingham Jail .”