- [Noah] In February of 1960, students from Atlanta's six historically Black universities and institutions joined forces to form the Committee on an Appeal for Human Rights.

Together, they demanded an end to racial discrimination and segregation through a series of protests, sit-ins, and economic boycotts.

- [Roslyn] We were about changing Jim Crow laws that said that we were not allowed to come in and eat where a white person ate.

We couldn't do anything.

We couldn't stay in a hotel.

We couldn't go to a white church.

I mean, there were all kinds of restrictions that we lived under.

- [Noah] The fight against segregation became known as the Atlanta Student Movement.

But what many don't realize is that beyond the familiar images of picketing and protests lies a deeper story, one of strategy, collaboration, and courage, all of which was powerfully demonstrated in one of the most pivotal sit-ins of the movement.

It happened here at this site in downtown Atlanta.

♪ Rise up ♪ ♪ Come and wake up, sleeper ♪ ♪ Rise up ♪ ♪ Come out of the ground ♪ ♪ Rise up ♪ - [Dr Hobson] There's no better way to understand history other than immersing yourself in the actual places where it unfolded.

♪ Oh, rise up ♪ - [Victoria] From the archives to the streets of Atlanta, join us as we uncover the hidden stories from Atlanta's past and how they impact today's future.

♪ Rise up, rise up ♪ ♪ Oh, rise up ♪ - [Noah] With every question and new discovery, we all leave our mark in "Redefining History."

(lively music) (lively music) The Atlanta Student Movement became one of the most effective nonviolent campaigns of its time.

It mobilized over 70,000 students, cost downtown Atlanta businesses millions of dollars, and compelled city leaders to begin dismantling segregation in public spaces.

(lively music) But one demonstration would thrust their cause into the national spotlight.

(lively music continues) What took place here was the culmination of many meetings, partnerships, and bold, unapologetic acts of civil disobedience.

Now, I am embarking on a journey to uncover more about what happened here at Rich's and the events that led to that historic day on October 19th, 1960.

Today, I'm going to visit Dr.

Littleton at the Atlanta History Center to find the answers.

(upbeat music) Hello, Dr.

Littleton.

- Hi, Noah.

- How are you?

- Welcome.

- Thank you so much for having me here at the stacks at the Atlanta History Center.

I wanna talk about the Atlanta Student Movement here.

I see you have some materials here that we're about to go into, but first I wanna get a sense of what the times are like.

What was the precursor to all of this?

- So what's really important when we talk about the Atlanta Student Movement is that we realize that it took place over the course of a number of years, really between 1960 and 1964.

Following the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955, nonviolent demonstrations among students in the South began to gain momentum, including events that we're familiar with like the Greensboro sit-ins, the Nashville sit-ins, and even the formation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

All of that took place in 1960.

And then in 1961, we see the Freedom Rides as these demonstrations begin to increase across the nation.

So the Atlanta Student Movement is just one phenomenal example of student activism taking place here in the city of Atlanta.

What's also important is that, you know, following the momentum of the Atlanta Student Movement, we see individuals who were in leadership like Lonnie King, like Julian Bond, like Ruby Doris Smith becoming very active in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and holding leadership roles eventually.

They wanted to vote.

They wanted to participate equally in citizenship in the city of Atlanta and in the United States of America.

And that's how we end up at the Atlanta Student Movement.

These students saw the need to organize themselves and get together and address those things that their community were seeking, such as access to hospitals, access to social spaces like movie theaters and concert venues, and also equal treatment from law enforcement.

- [Noah] Who were the key players involved during this time?

- Of course, Lonnie King, who was a student at Morehouse, he's credited by many as being the main organizer of the movement.

Lonnie King was inspired by the ongoing protests that were happening in places like North Carolina, the Greensboro sit-in.

- [Lonnie] The four young boys from Greensboro started the movement.

It was clear that they were protesting segregation.

I said, "We're gonna make that happen here."

I said, "Let's get together and organize something."

- [Dr.

Littleton] And so he brought that inspiration to Atlanta University Center.

There were also individuals like Julian Bond, Dr.

Gwendolyn Middlebrooks, Charles Black, Morris Dillard, Ruby Doris Smith, and Dr.

Roslyn Pope, who was also a student at Spelman, who a lot of people credit as being the author of "An Appeal for Human Rights," and Honorable Judge Brenda Cole.

It's really important that we know that there were figureheads, but this was a student movement.

There are a number of students, named and unnamed, who participated in the movement.

(upbeat music) - [Roslyn] I was in Yates and Milton the day after the students at North Carolina had protested.

Lonnie came over and, it might have been Julian, they both came, but one of them said, "Have you heard about the Greensboro Four?

I think we need to do a similar kind of activity."

- [Julian] When the notion of modeling an activity in Atlanta after the situation in Greensboro was put on the table it clicked in my mind that this might work.

I knew that we couldn't survive in a violent confrontation with the segregationists but we perhaps had a chance if we approached it the way it was being proposed.

- [Noah] Many know how the Atlanta Student Movement fought segregation, but fewer understand the depth of what they were fighting for, but it was powerfully outlined in a manifesto called "An Appeal for Human Rights."

- In March of 1960, "An Appeal of Human Rights" was authored by several students in the Atlanta University Center, with a lot of credit to the great Roslyn Pope from Spelman College.

The "Appeal for Human Rights" was a collaborative effort on the part of students in the Atlanta Student Movement.

The appeal contains several demands or wants that students wanted to see in terms of equality and access in the city of Atlanta.

They then ran this in the newspaper in March of 1960 for all to see, right?

Being very upfront about the need for change in the city of Atlanta.

- When this document was released, how was it received?

- Good question.

You would think that it was received well, and the honest answer is that it got mixed reviews.

- I read the paid advertisement reporting to come from students of the six affiliated institutions forming the Atlanta University Center.

That statement was skillfully prepared.

Obviously, it was not written by students.

Certainly all Georgians reject the implication and the charge that our capital city and our state is a land of inequality and injustice.

- There were some folks who were saying that we needed to sit back and wait for change to come, and that this kind of document was an attempt to aggravate or agitate people instead of let integration or desegregation happen naturally and over time.

- I would like to make this comment about this ad.

Some of our people think that we have moved too slowly in the field of race relations, and then there are others who constantly accuse us of moving too rapidly.

But whether we have moved too rapidly or too slowly, we have at least tried to be of goodwill towards all our citizens, to preserve an atmosphere of harmony, and when we move, to move in the right direction.

This will be the policy of the city of Atlanta so long as I am its mayor.

- So we have a series of photos here that are representative of a protest outside of Rich's Department Store.

Rich's Department Store, very prominent in the city, very beloved, but again, there was an access issue.

- [Noah] Rich's, the city's largest and most influential department store became a focal point in the fight against segregation.

At Rich's, Black shoppers could buy merchandise, but they weren't allowed to try on clothes, use the restrooms, or dine in the Magnolia Room.

- Students took it upon themselves to demand equal treatment and to boycott Rich's.

Black folks actually had a significant amount of buying power in the city, and that economically they were trying to participate, and should they not participate, it would have some very serious financial consequences for businesses like Rich's, but as well as other businesses throughout the city.

Students were all over the place trying to effect change in as many different locations as they could throughout the city.

We see several individuals here who are wearing these different signs that are saying, "Wear old clothes with new dignity.

Don't buy here."

We see other signs that say, "The presence of segregation is the absence of democracy."

Again, talking about that participation in the American Dream.

(birds chirping) (lively music) - [Noah] After learning more about the planning behind the movement and the key people who made it happen, I'm ready to go into the spaces where all of this history took place.

♪ Oh, take me higher ♪ - [Noah] I'm here at Clark Atlanta University at what is now their student center.

In February 1960, students Lonnie King, Joseph Pierce, and Julian Bond met here to organize what we know today as the Atlanta Student Movement.

Upon hearing the news of the students' attempt to organize protests against segregation, the presidents of the six AUC institutions felt that the students should focus on their academics and return to class.

- [Gwendolyn] I understood where the presidents of the colleges stood.

Their job was to educate the students who were enrolled according to a prescribed curriculum.

This was not a part of that curriculum, but they were the first people behind us to support us once we moved forward.

- [Noah] The appeal put their demands and grievances on the record.

Now it was time to act.

On March 15th, 1960, the students took their fight to the streets, launching sit-ins, protests, and boycotts across downtown Atlanta.

- [Morris] I would say that the initial thrust of the student movement was public accommodations, the lunch counters.

(lively music) - We selected very carefully about 11 locations in downtown Atlanta, and exactly 11 o'clock in the morning we hit all those places at the same time, about 200 some students.

- [Noah] Sit-ins were held at public spaces such as the Atlanta City Hall, the State Capitol, Leb's Restaurant, and many other spaces that were known to be segregated in Atlanta.

The students even protested white churches in Atlanta with kneel-in demonstrations.

- We were extremely well organized.

We planned everything with military precision down to the minutest detail.

If we were gonna have sit-ins, we knew exactly where the entrances and exits were, how many seats there would be there, where there's a phone booth nearby that somebody could watch and see what's happening, could call the office and report it.

Prior to that time, of course, we had had meetings, we talked about the nonviolent civil disobedience approach.

People were thrown to the floor, beaten, and all that sort of thing.

But we were still brave enough to keep doing what we were doing.

A lot of folk who participated who were local, were afraid that their parents would lose their jobs.

In some cases, their parents encouraged them to participate.

Others didn't want to participate, and they did so against their parents' wishes.

We had an understanding that those of you who are prepared to stay and be arrested, you know, you do that.

And if you're given a chance, if you don't wanna be arrested, you leave if you're given an opportunity to do so.

And about, I think 77, I believe it was, were arrested on that day.

I was arrested and taken to the city farm along with Martin Luther King Jr.

's brother and much of other people.

This is the first time, you know, being in a paddy wagon or in handcuffs and all that.

So you didn't know what to expect.

We didn't where we were going.

We didn't know what a jail would be like.

And if, you know, we sent us to the prison farm, we didn't know what that was gonna be like.

We were awakened at 4:30 in the morning and given some stuff they call food for breakfast, and taken out to a cabbage field to chop weeds from the plants growing out there.

And the girls sat on the ground peeling potatoes.

And we were sentenced to 10 days at the city farm, but were released after four days because of the public outcry and all that.

- I have to ask, to hopefully avoid penalties in the harsh consequences, what strategies would you all employ?

How old were you?

I'm 26, you were definitely younger than me.

- I was 19 at the time.

We were trying to avoid the penalties, you know, that's part of the whole concept of civil disobedience, it's a nonviolence.

You got to be prepared to take the consequences.

If that means imprisonment, you know, to admit to beating, you know, you got to be prepared for all of that.

If it meant the possible loss of your life, you know, everybody understood that those were the risks that we were taking.

- [Morris] That strategy was pursued for several months, and as it began to lose its effectiveness, it occurred to us that we needed to ratchet up our activities and needed to put more emphasis on the economic side of the equation.

And Rich's being the number one department store in Atlanta was the number one target.

If we can hurt Rich's from an economic point of view, then we've got a chance of bringing the others in line.

And that economic boycott was a very unpopular strategy initially because Rich's had some of our senior leaders on their side who were encouraging us not to do that, that they felt that they could talk their way into some sort of settlement.

We didn't believe that.

(lively music) - [Noah] With Rich's at the center, Lonnie King set out to organize massive demonstrations and sit-ins across the city again.

But this time, he invited Dr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

to join the protest, knowing they would be arrested.

Also, this was all unfolding right at the helm of the presidential election between Nixon and Kennedy, and the students felt that having Dr.

King participate would draw national attention and force the candidates to address the issue of segregation in their campaigns.

The day came to implement the new plan.

On October 19th, 1960, hundreds of students mobilized across the city with a new plan, staged sit-ins, barring jail, no bail.

Lonnie King, Dr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

and several other students met on Rich's Crystal Bridge where the Bridge Cafe was located.

There, they were denied service by Rich's staff.

Undeterred, the group took the elevator to the sixth floor and entered the Magnolia Room.

When Dr.

King, Lonnie King, and other students attempted to order, they were again denied service and ordered to leave.

They refused.

Moments later, they were arrested.

More than 50 demonstrators were arrested that day, including Dr.

King and Lonnie King.

- [Charles] So when King was arrested at Rich's, he was in violation of his probation.

Prior to the date that he was arrested at Rich's, he had been arrested sometime earlier for driving an automobile with a Georgia license plate on it while he still had an Alabama license.

That was complicated by the fact there was a white woman in the car with him, Lillian Smith.

So he sentenced King to four months in prison, but the sentence was probated.

- [Noah] The arrest of this nationally-known civil rights leader moved the stakes beyond Atlanta.

The students had successfully changed the scale of the conversation.

Days after his arrest, presidential candidate John F. Kennedy made a telephone call to Coretta Scott King, wife of Dr.

Martin Luther King.

Kennedy offered Coretta his support, and through various negotiations, he was able to get Martin Luther King released from jail.

- Well, I owe a great debt of gratitude to Senator Kennedy and his family for this.

I don't know the details of it, but naturally I'm very happy to know of Senator Kennedy's concern, and all that he did to make this possible.

- The demonstration at Rich's went national and set off a chain reaction that would shape the course of American history.

Senator John F. Kennedy's public support for Dr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

following his arrest at Rich's helped earn the trust and support of many Black voters, a constituency that proved pivotal in one of the closest presidential elections in American history.

Kennedy won the 1960 election with help from Georgia's 12 Electoral College votes, and went on to accelerate race relations in America.

- We observed today not a victory of party, but a celebration of freedom, symbolizing an end as well as a beginning, signifying renewal as well as change.

- [Noah] However, at the time, civil rights victory for Atlanta students had not yet come.

They continued to boycott and protest throughout the holidays and into the spring of 1961.

- The Klan picketed us while we were picketing the department stores.

They were on the same sidewalk, you know, we walking in this direction, they walk in the opposite direction.

And that did not intimidate us.

Matter of fact, they only did it for a couple of weeks before somebody pointed out to them that they were making our boycott more effective because people wouldn't stay away because of us, they stayed away because of them.

The reason for the effectiveness of our boycott was because we understood that we were financing our own oppression, and that is an important message I try to pass on to current generations.

We were buying from people who restricted our access to their eating facilities, the use of the restrooms or water fountains, what have you, and they were charging us the same money they charged everybody else, and that's why we had a boycott of downtown businesses in Atlanta.

We withdrew our patronage from them, and they lost some $10 million over the Christmas holiday in 1960.

That is why they gave in, you know?

We got their attention because we were taking money out of their pockets.

We stopped financing our own oppression.

- And we feel that if the progress is to be meaningful progress, it must include the Deep South, including Atlanta.

And I'm sure that with the reasonable climate in Atlanta, it is possible to desegregate lunch counters without any real difficulty, and the transition could be a very smooth one.

- [Noah] In early March 1961, Lonnie King was invited to a private meeting between Atlanta's Black political leaders and the city's white business leaders.

Just one year after "An Appeal for Human Rights" was published, months of sit-ins, arrests, and economic boycotts had brought Atlanta's white business leaders to the negotiating table.

The economic boycott proved highly effective.

They proposed desegregating lunch counters in the fall with the integration of the city's public schools.

Lonnie King was hesitant, and many students viewed the compromise as betrayal, a surrender.

In response, a meeting was held on March 10th, 1961 at Warren Memorial Methodist Church where Dr.

Martin Luther King delivered a compelling speech, urging the students to accept the agreement.

They did, and ended the boycott.

The white business leaders held up their end of the agreement.

By the fall of 1961, Atlanta's public schools had integrated and more than 300 lunch counters and restaurants had opened their doors to Black customers.

What began as student action in Atlanta had dismantled segregation and fueled the broader Civil Rights Movement.

Three years later in 1964, the Civil Rights Act was passed, marking the culmination of the Atlanta Student Movement's campaign to desegregate public spaces.

However, the national fight continued through other student-led organizations such as SNCC, whose grassroots organizing helped pave the way for the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

(lively music) - Part of the success of our efforts was that we understood that there was no limit to what you could achieve if you didn't care who got the credit, or if you didn't feel the need to have a press conference every time you had a success.

So we allowed the opposition to save face as it were.

You know, when we desegregated things, we didn't go to no press conference to say anything about it.

We just did it.

The most important thing that I want people to know is that a movement is by its nature multidimensional, which means that it involves a deep commitment to high ideals on the part of a lot of different people doing a lot of different things over a long period of time.

And what that meant in the case of our movement was we understood that there were a lot of folk who supported our efforts, were not willing to go to jail or to sit in or to picket, or any of that stuff, but they would make sandwiches for us, they would make signs, they would make phone calls, they'd provide transportation, they would serve as lookouts, you know, they'd cancel their credit card for the downtown department stores.

They put their homes up as collateral to bail us out of jail.

So I say to young people today, you know, if you're gonna have a movement, there's something other than a slogan or a press conference, you know, these are the ingredients you have to understand that are involved.

(lively music) - [Noah] Now, more than 60 years later, Atlanta's sacred spaces still echo with the seen and unseen efforts of students determined to build a better city, one truly too busy to hate.

Salute to the students of Atlanta whose bravery, militancy, and genius laid the foundation for the groundbreaking victories of the Civil Rights Movement, and one more step towards desegregation in the Atlanta civil rights timeline.

(lively music) (lively music continues) (bright music) - [Narrator] WABE.