The 1960 Memphis Sit-In Movement

The students who sat in were taken to court. Twenty-three LeMoyne College students were charged with trespassing after trying to use the Cossitt Library and the Brooks Art Museum, and Benjamin Hooks, later the NAACP's executive director, represented them. He arranged a two-week truce with the city to discuss opening the public libraries, the zoo and the Brooks and Pink Palace museums. The talks failed, sit-ins and protests continued for months, and the case went to federal court. The Supreme Court then ordered public facilities opened to all citizens regardless of race.

What the plaque says

The 1960 Memphis Sit-In Movement The Sit-In Movement against racial segregation reached Memphis Friday, March 18, 1960 when seven Owen Junior College students sat-in at the lunch counter in McClellan's Variety Store downtown. The next day, 36 students from LeMoyne College and Owen Junior College left a rally to participate in a sit-in at Cossitt and Peabody public libraries. Law enforcement officials arrested the students, along with five negro journalists. The public facilities-focused sit-ins inspired others to sit-in at city museums and parks, department stores and churches. Urged by Marion Barry, a LeMoyne graduate and national chair of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the resolute efforts of these students were important contributions to the desegregation of Memphis.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Stax Museum of American Soul Music — 0.3 mi
  A rebuilt Stax studio on the site of the old Capitol Theatre, with a replica of the sloped-floor Studio A, Isaac Hayes's Cadillac and the story of an integrated soul label.
• Elmwood Cemetery — 0.5 mi
  Memphis's oldest active cemetery, a rural garden cemetery of about 1,500 trees opened in 1852, with Black civic leaders, yellow fever victims and the city's whole history in its lots.
• Sun Studio — 1.4 mi
  The small Union Avenue room where Sam Phillips recorded Rocket 88, Howlin' Wolf, Elvis Presley and the Million Dollar Quartet, now a National Historic Landmark.
• 1866 Memphis Massacre Marker at Army Park — 1.6 mi
  A privately funded NAACP marker in a small downtown park, placed in 2016, that names the May 1866 attack on Black South Memphis as a massacre.

More markers nearby

• Hollis Freeman Price, Sr. — steps away
• LeMoyne-Owen College — steps away
• Dr. Joseph Edison Walker — steps away
• People's Grocery — steps away