Sit-ins 57When the Nashville police chief announced that student demonstrators
would be arrested, John Lewis, an Alabama sharecropper’s son, hurriedly
composed a set of ‘do’s’ and ‘don’ts’ for his peers: ‘Do be friendly and cour-
teous at all times. Do sit straight and face the counter. Do remember the non-
violent teachings of Jesus Christ, Mohandas Gandhi, and Martin Luther King.
Don’t strike back or curse if abused. Don’t laugh out. Don’t leave your seat
without permission. Don’t block store entrances or aisles.’ The guidelines
came just in time. Thugs spat on the protesters before pulling them off the
stools and beating them. The well-coached students did not retaliate. One
co-ed even smiled after a lighted cigarette was crushed in her hair. After the
beatings, a policeman said, ‘Okay, all you nigras, get up from the lunch
counter or we’re going to arrest you.’ No one moved, so the police dragged
the students away on charges of trespassing and disorderly conduct. Another
wave of protesters replaced those who were arrested. When the next round
of arrests came, a third wave of protesters occupied all the lunch-counter
seats. To boost their spirits, the Nashville demonstrators sang one song over
and over: ‘I’m gonna do what the spirit says do, If the spirit says sit in, I’m
gonna sit in, If the spirit says boycott, I’m gonna boycott, If the spirit says go
to jail, I’m gonna go to jail, I’m gonna do what the spirit says do.’
Nearly every arrested Nashville student followed the new dictum – ‘jail,
no bail.’ Civil rights organizer Bayard Rustin explained why this strategy was
crucial to the movement’s success: ‘There are not enough jails to accommo-
date the movement. This is an important strength...Only so many can fit
into a cell; if you remain here, there can be no more arrests! Imprisonment
is an expense to the state; it must feed and take care of you. Bails and fines
are an expense to the movement, which it can ill afford.’ Bail was set at $100,
but lowered to $5 when the students refused to pay the higher amount. Still
the students would not pay, leaving the officials no choice but to release the
students into the custody of their college deans. The jail, no bail strategy had
worked perfectly. To end the sit-ins, a mayoral committee recommended that
stores divide the lunch-counters into white and black sections. The students
flatly rejected the proposal, and the sit-ins resumed. Black adults offered
food, money, and prayers for their new leaders – the students.
The black community helped out in an even more effective way – a boy-
cott of downtown merchants. Those who defied the boycott were roughed
up by black enforcers. As the boycott took hold, a bomb destroyed the home
of Z. Alexander Looby, a black city councilman and defense attorney for the
students. Although Looby and his family were uninjured, 4,000 angry blacks
marched on city hall in what was the first large-scale march of the civil rights
movement. They walked silently as whites watched in amazement. On the
steps of city hall, Diane Nash asked for mayor Ben West’s opinion of racial
discrimination. Backed into a corner, West agreed ‘as a man’ that discrimination
Jail, No Bail: The strategy
of filling up jail cells so
that segregation would
collapse.