Your Black Bloggers The official gathering spot for black bloggers
On February 1, 1960 four black students sat down at a segregated lunch counter I Greensboro, NC sparking one of Black America’s largest waves of protest. By the end of February the sit-in movement had grown to thirty communities in seven states and by April had spread across the entire South, involving up to 50,000 participants. Over the next decade the leaders who emerged out of this wave of actions would carry out some of the most important campaigns of the Civil Rights movement — from the Freedom Rides to the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party’s challenge to racism of the Democratic Party. Eventually their work would help to topple the Jim Crow regime and launch the Black Power movement.
In the decade after the sit-ins, these new leaders would experience both incredible triumphs and crushing defeats. They would try different strategies and tactics for Black liberation from direct action to bring down segregation to voter registration to build Black political power. Underlying every new stage of the struggle was a deep dedication to breaking the chains of fear and internalized inferiority and transforming the conditions of violence and exploitation that limited the potential for the full flourishing of Black lives. For these leaders, personal liberation and social transformation were inseparable and the role of leadership was, at its heart, the practice of supporting everyday people in taking effective action to transform themselves and their conditions in the face of great odds and uncertain outcomes.
