Читать книгу Freedom Facts and Firsts - Jessie Carney Smith - Страница 96

Civil rights actions in Portsmouth, Virginia, during 1960 were not well organized at the beginning, being unplanned and spontaneous student efforts in sympathy with the Greensboro sit-ins. This led to the first violent confrontation between black demonstrators and white supporters of segregation, but later protests were more disciplined and successful in desegregating public facilities in the city. On February 12, 1960, several African American female high school students marked Abraham Lincoln’s birthday by staging a sit-in at Rose’s Variety Store in downtown Portsmouth. With no formal leadership, organization, or planning, they sat at the store’s lunch counter and were refused service until the store closed at 5:30 P.M.

They continued the protest for the next few days, as other black students joined their efforts. Even without training, they applied the basic principle of non-violent protest by not responding to insults from white hecklers. Local media coverage began, documenting the violent outbreak on February 16, when young white hoodlums attacked the demonstrators, and some blacks retaliated after a flying object hit a black girl. On February 17, a crowd of over 3,000 blacks and whites gathered as the group attempted to continue the sit-in, and the blacks were attacked by police dogs. Gordon Carey, a white field secretary from the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), arrived in Portsmouth on February 18 to train and organize the students into the Student Movement for Racial Equality, which achieved success in local civil rights efforts.

Fletcher F. Moon