An Unseen Light by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2018-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

LeMoyne College students arrested after Cossitt Library sit-in, March 19, 1960. (Courtesy Special Collections Department, University of Memphis)

The “gutsy, wonderful kids … threatening the status quo by fighting peacefully for first class citizenship” galvanized the Memphis civil rights community.49 Maxine Smith recalled that the executive board of the local NAACP branch was meeting to discuss plans for a Memphis sit-in movement when it received the call to come bail out the library protesters.50 Lawyers Russell Sugarmon and A. W. Willis were quickly dispatched to the jail to arrange for the protesters’ release.51 The proceedings lasted several hours. Judge Beverly Bouche set the bond at $352 for each protester, totaling $14,432 for the group.

In the meantime, a hastily arranged mass meeting on Saturday evening at the Mount Olive Christian Methodist Episcopal Church drew ministers from numerous churches, and they promised to call on their congregants to contribute money for the sit-in movement.52 The meeting also resulted in the adoption of a statement for the press, which read: “The Memphis Branch of the NAACP … wishes to declare its wholehearted support of these students, their objectives and their non-violent demonstrations. This branch further pledges its moral, financial and legal resources to assist them in achieving these goals.”53 By the time the bond hearings began at 10:30 p.m., the NAACP had rounded up $5,270 in cash and put up corporate bonds for the remainder.54 The police entered the church at around 1:15 a.m., nightsticks in hand, to clear out the building, threatening to “lock you up for loitering on the streets at 1:30 a.m.”55

The library protesters, released in groups of fifteen or so, were greeted outside the jailhouse by a jubilant crowd of about a hundred people and escorted to a gathering in a residence at 519 Vance Avenue—right next door to the Negro branch of the library.56 As they were released, most of the protesters declined to comment for the press, although Ed Young served notice that “We have just begun to fight.”57 When asked why she was at the library, Gwendolyn Townsend told a reporter, “I felt that since I was a citizen, I had the right to attend the library.”58

The arrests were not inconsequential. The Tri-State Defender ceased publication for a week until its staff could file their reports.59 A number of students were fired from their part-time jobs or domestic work.60 Despite the approbation they received in the press, not all the students’ families were pleased. Marion Barry recalled that his mother’s first reaction to the sit-ins in Nashville had been to reprimand him: “Boy, what are you doing in jail?”61 The long-term fate of most of the Memphis protesters has not been tracked, but Fred Jones, one of the Greensboro sit-in pioneers, was blackballed from employment after his graduation.62

The Sunday following the first sit-ins, African American churches were filled with sermons urging support for the protesters. Herbert Brewster noted that the students “were merely applying Gandhi and Nehru’s tactic of passive resistance to compel the white race to

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