Sit-Ins: A Desegregation Role Play
Lesson by Chris Hoeh
In second grade teacher Chris Hoeh’s classroom, students spend several weeks studying the history of the struggle for racial justice in the United States — from 1619 through the modern Civil Rights Movement. As part of that unit, they do a role play on desegregation.
There are legitimate concerns about the use of simulations as a pedagogical tool. One of the major concerns is the oversimplification of complex topics related to oppression. However, when facilitated correctly, simulations can be a powerful antibias and critical pedagogy strategy.
Included in this lesson is “Considerations for Effective Role Plays or Simulations,” which includes key points about what NOT to do in a simulation. We also recommend the Zinn Education Project article,“How to — and How Not to — Teach Role Plays.”
John Salter, Joan Trumpauer, and Anne Moody sit-in at the downtown Woolworth’s in Jackson, Mississippi, on May 28, 1963. They are surrounded by a mob who pour ketchup, sugar, and other condiments on them. Fred Blackwell, Erle E. Johnston Papers, University of Southern Mississippi Libraries
Grade Level: Elementary
Time Required: Four class periods
Groups of students lean over paper, choosing bright markers to write posters and picket signs emblazoned with the slogans:
Jim Crow Must Go Down Forever and Ever!
Boycott Wool’s Store Jim Crow left his spirit there
Don’t go to Wool’s Clothing
Store Do Not Buy at Wool’s Clothing Store! It is segregated.
Xs are not treated fairly
We Shall Overcome!!!
Some are working furiously to produce “clothing” from paper to be sold in unsegregated stores as an alternative to Wool’s. The children are replicating the fair trade movement. Others are composing songs, chants, or speeches denouncing the segregation laws and discriminatory practices of the business owners in “Lee’s Landing.”
The X and Y’s Desegregation Role Play is reaching its climax. Earlier activists were arrested attempting to desegregate the targeted segregated business, Wool’s Clothing Store. Now, alternative antisegregation clothing shops are open to serve all customers, boycott signs are hung all across the city of “Lee’s Landing” (my classroom), picket signs are ready, songs have been written, chants and speeches readied, cartoons are in the “newspaper.” It is time for the rally.
Materials
Considerations for Effective Role Plays or Simulation
Role Play
Materials to make signs
Preparation 1: Building Background Knowledge of Institutional Racism
Interview Reflection Sheets
Preparation 2: Building Background Knowledge of the Sit-In Tactics
Video: A Force More Powerful, Episode 1
Chart Paper
Nashville Student Sit-Ins 10 Rules of Conduct
Enduring Understandings for Students in this Curriculum
All people, including children and youth, have a place in the struggle for social justice, using all of their many talents (writing, speaking, singing, arts, etc.)
Movements for liberation and resistance against unfair laws require intelligence, strategic thinking, cooperation, and perseverance
Tactics are chosen as part of a wider strategy
People of color and women were leaders of the modern Civil Rights Movement
Placement of Role Play in the Desegregation Unit
These 2nd grade students have spent about six weeks studying the history of the struggle for racial justice in the United States — from 1619 through the modern Civil Rights Movement. Starting in the fall, the students investigated myriad forms of resistance, African American achievement, the abolitionist movement, emancipation, Reconstruction, sharecropping, injustices of segregation and Jim Crow, and the power of collective nonviolent social justice movements. I chose this curriculum because I believe that the purpose of education is to prepare children to be active citizens, working with others to improve our communities, the environment, and the conditions people live in. Broadly, this means working for justice. Justice includes environmental sustainability, care, and support so all people have their needs met and can enjoy life, economic equity, peace, workers’ rights, and democratic decision-making that respects the rights and inputs of minorities.
For several years, my students have participated in this desegregation unit and each year I make changes (hopefully improvements) based on my experience and knowledge of the particular group. While each group of students chooses to repeat many of the same tactics from previous years, the style and forms of resistance are always unique. They have chosen to target a restaurant, a swimming pool, and a clothing store. There is always energy, outrage at the injustices of segregation and racism, and powerful calls for justice.
My students have been prepared for the desegregation unit by two preparatory activities (descriptions of these activities follow the Role-Play Procedure):
Preparation 1: Building Background Knowledge of Institutional Racism
Preparation 2: Building Background Knowledge of the Sit-Ins as Tactics
The children are prepared to take on the roles of residents of an imagined segregated community. The “Xs & Ys Role Play” will begin the following day.
Building Background Knowledge of the Sit-In Tactics
The students are upset that Jim Crow laws existed and that racist traditions persisted after Brown v. Board of Education, but they are encouraged by the victory of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. I tell them that they will get to be anti-Jim Crow activists as part of a role play. I ask, “How can you learn how to defeat segregation?”
They often respond with examples of resistance from the abolitionist movement and the Montgomery Bus Boycott. I acknowledge their background knowledge. Then I tell them that I can show them an example of a real campaign to end segregation that occurred shortly after the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
This campaign is known as the 1960 Nashville Sit-In Movement. It was prompted by civil rights leaders’ conviction that the nonviolent strategies employed during the Montgomery Bus Boycott and derived from the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi could be employed to bring racial justice. In 1959, the Rev. James Lawson took up this mission. He had studied nonviolent movements in India for three years and developed a sophisticated understanding of the rationale and strategies they employed.
I explain that we are lucky that there is a recording of the Nashville movement. We will study it to learn how to stand up to segregation. The video is the Nashville Sit-In portion of the documentary A Force More Powerful (Episode 1), which begins at 26:22 and ends at 51:17. I remind the children that we are watching this video as people who are training to end discrimination, so we must pay close attention and look for the lessons.
As we are watching, I stop the video when children have questions and when there is important strategic information. I activate their thinking by posing questions relevant to the study and information contained in the video.
On chart paper I record:
“What are the goals?”
Desegregate Nashville, fairness for all people…
“What are the steps that Rev. Lawson outlines?”
Study — learn what issues are the sources of injustice,
Choose a target to focus on that will highlight the unfairness,
Plan, pick, prepare, and practice actions,
Take action, and
Negotiate with the other side to meet your demands.
“What tactics do they choose and why?”
Sit-ins, boycotts, marches, rallies, letter writing, petitions, songs, chants, signs, picketing. At first just the lunch counters, later boycotting the entire business district.
As the documentary progresses, viewers can learn essential knowledge about the sophisticated thinking and preparation of the Black leadership as well as key components of powerful nonviolent direct action campaigns. The activists are prepared: They study the nonviolent campaigns of Gandhi and Dr. King; they practice likely scenarios, including being harassed and attacked. (In this section of the video I mute because the N word is used. I explain muting it because there is inappropriate language.) Participants take on a variety of roles including group captains and observers with dimes to make phone calls. There are explicit Do’s and Don’ts for sitting in.
At this point I stop the video and distribute copies of the “10 Rules of Conduct” handout produced by students Bernard Lafayette and John Lewis for everyone involved with the sit-in.
DO NOT:
Strike back nor curse if abused.
Laugh out.
Hold conversations with a floor walker.
Leave your seat until your leader has given you permission to do so.
Block entrances to stores outside nor the aisles inside.
DO:
Show yourself friendly and courteous at all times.
Sit straight: Always face the counter.
Report all serious incidents to your leader.
Refer information seekers to your leader in a polite manner.
Remember the teachings of Jesus Christ, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King.
Remember that love and nonviolence is the way.
The organizers also have ways for people who can’t be arrested to participate. My students can recognize the intelligence of the organizers and the need to have a strategy.
Once the sit-ins begin, we see stark examples of unfairness. Student activists are set upon while sitting at the lunch counter by thugs who dump food on the activists and beat them to the floor. Then police arrest Black people and white allies, but not the attackers. As soon as those people are arrested, another group comes in and sits down. They were prepared: Four waves of people come in and are all arrested by flabbergasted police officers. Then we see the activists in a courtroom, surrounded by supporters, who overflow to mass outside. Later, civil rights activists are convicted of sitting at a lunch counter. The activists choose not to pay a fine — they will spend 30 days in jail.
This astounds my students, as no one wants to go to jail. But then my pupils see how this choice overfills the city jails, brings the attention of Nashville and the nation to the injustices of Jim Crow. Additionally, it costs the city a lot of money. My students now understand the power of this decision.
The movement continues with additional civil disobedience and arrest in stores till the store owners close their lunch counters. There are people that can’t get arrested, so what can they do? They boycott the entire retail district, we see people picketing. I share photos that show people picketing stores in other parts of the country (like my grandparents), and it spreads. People do what they can do. The business owners’ sales dropped precipitously.
I ask the students, “What did the business owners think?” Typical responses are, “Oh, they must be upset. They don’t get money if they don’t sell things. They were probably saying we need to end this.” That is what happens. After a couple of months, racists try to scare the Black community: A bomb explodes in front of a leading lawyer’s house. Nobody is badly hurt but it damages his house.
We see how violence has the purpose of scaring protesters and then how the activists respond with courage. The next morning, thousands of people silently march to the City Hall. The Mayor comes out to meet with them. Eventually, a young, Black woman, Diane Nash, asks him, “Mayor West, do you feel that it is wrong to discriminate against a person solely on the basis of his race or color?” She goes on to ask whether lunch counters should be desegregated, and he answers “Yes.” That signals the start of desegregation. The Nashville campaign has succeeded, and the students and I celebrate this victory.
We reflect on this case study. I ask, “What are your feelings about this? Why did they win? How can you use what you learned from the video?”
Once the role play begins, the children often refer to the chart paper notes to guide their decisions. I overhear, “Remember what Rev. Lawson said, we have to pick a target… we have to follow these rules for sitting in…”