As France’s student protests make headlines, remember the legacy of Black student activism
TheGrio...
From the Moton High School strike to the Greensboro sit-ins and campus protests today, Black students have long been on the front lines of movements for justice.
When students in France recently took to the streets over the state of their schools, their protests quickly grew into nationwide civil unrest, and the images traveled across the Atlantic, sparking a range of reactions. While some Americans view the French protests as a blueprint outraged Americans should consider following, Black communities saw something more familiar: a reflection of the activist work tradition our ancestors built and that we still carry today.
For Black people, protest isn’t a tactic borrowed from abroad, but rather an inheritance. It runs from slave revolts and abolition through the civil rights and Black Power movements to Black Lives Matter. And through the years, Black students have been on the front lines, choosing, in the words of the late Congressman John Lewis, to “get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America.”
For instance, as civil unrest bubbled up amongst French students, students at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (NC A&T), Bennett College, and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) protested the removal of early voting sites from two of Greensboro, NC’s biggest campuses, one of which is the country’s largest HBCU.
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From protesting at North Carolina’s state election board meeting in January to marching in the streets of Greensboro last week, these students, like many Black students at HBCUs and predominantly white colleges alike, are walking in the footsteps of generations of students who have fought for justice. Here are some of the many Black student-led protests through the years
The Moton High School Strike
On April 23, 1951, 16-year-old Barbara Rose Johns led about 450 of her classmates out of Robert Russa Moton High School in Farmville, Virginia. The student’s walkout was in protest of the poor conditions at their school compared to the nearby white high school. Pushing to end segregation, the case was one of the five combined in Brown v. Board of Education and was the only student-initiated case. Despite Johns’ pivotal role in the protest, the case was named after Dorothy E. Davis, the first person to sign the petition.
The Greensboro Four
On February 1, 1960, four Black NC A&T students, Joseph McNeil, Ezell Blair, Franklin McCain, and David Richmond, sat at Woolworth’s whites-only lunch counter, initiating a sit-in. The four students’ refusal to leave despite being denied service helped spark a student sit-in movement that would expand to 30 locations across 7 states and involve 50,000 participants.
Freedom Riders
In the spring of 1961, student activists from the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) launched the Freedom Rides to challenge segregation on interstate buses and bus terminals. Traveling by bus from Washington, D.C., to Jackson, Mississippi, the riders faced violent opposition in the Deep South, gaining national attention and ultimately prompting federal intervention.
Birmingham Children’s Crusade
On May 2, 1963, over 1,000 students skipped classes to meet at 16th Street Baptist Church to march into downtown Birmingham, Alabama, in protest of legalized segregation. Despite hundreds of students being arrested that day, more students returned the following day, where they were met with police clubs, dogs, and high-pressure fire hoses. These protests persisted and ultimately ended after the U.S. Department of Justice intervened, leading President John F. Kennedy to propose the Civil Rights Act, which President Lyndon B. Johnson signed in 1964.
SFSU Black student union
From November 1968 to March 1969, Black students at San Francisco State University, alongside the Third World Liberation Front, a coalition of Latino, Asian American, and Native American students, organized the longest student strike in the US. Lasting 5 months, the students endured forceful policing, arrests, and more, and still the protest resulted in them winning the nation’s first College of Ethnic Studies program and its first Department of Black Studies.
Howard University sit-ins and building seizures
Since 1968, generations of Howard University students have taken over administrative and campus buildings to demand reforms in the university’s curricula, disciplinary practices, and, most recently, the conditions of student dorms.