March Lesson Plan

What were some of the increasingly aggressive encounters the students faced as they continued their desegregation sit-ins? How do you make sense of these hateful and often violent responses from business owners?

As the Nashville Student Movement and SNCC stepped up their protests and persisted in their nonviolent unwillingness to back down from laws and rules they considered unjust, many white Southerners in Nashville and countless other cities responded with increasingly violent, sometimes deadly, force. For example, activists sitting in at lunch counters and restaurants sometimes encountered white people who would spit on them, spray hoses at them, dump bleach on...