Woolworth’s Sit-in
John Salter, Joan Trumpauer, and Anne Moody sit in at the downtown Woolworth’s in Jackson, Mississippi on May 28, 1963.
After an ongoing boycott of white-owned stores proves incapable of breaking segregation, student activists trained in nonviolence sit-in at Woolworth’s lunch counter in downtown Jackson.
They are surrounded by a mob of whites who curse them, punch them, kick them, and douse them with mustard, ketchup, and sugar. The direct action gives rise to mass meetings, mass marches, mass arrests, and an iconic photograph of the protestors, above. They included Anne Moody, whose autobiography Coming of Age in Mississippi would become a classic text of the times. Learn more.