It shows a sit in on the results of the cities you know we're sitting in is if you don't a sit in was done by black college students and by some white students in the South to change segregation and force integration.

I was a kid in the North, and I was taught in school as all of us were stored in the 19 fifties, that America is the land of the free, and we also identified with our generation, as every generation does.

And we were the baby boomer generation, so big generation and in high school, late high school in early college, I'm seeing black college students in the South do something amazing and something amazing happened to them.

That's sitting.

So I want to share with you a little background before I show you the clip.

Some picture February 1st 1960.

These black college students sit down in Greensboro, North Carolina, and I think it's a Woolworth and they just sit down to have a cup of coffee Now They had been trained by the local churches who were very supportive and by people who taught Nonviolence.

The Martin Luther King View the Gandhi view.

You have to learn how to do this because we're going to get stuff dumped on our heads.

And so they sit down the first day and they're not served.

They chose Woolworth's for a specific reason.

Woolworth's was a place A lot of black people purchased things, but you couldn't get hired.

There were no black people managers.

There were no black people, sales people.

There were no way to eat there.

There was a special bathroom, which was No.

One.

There is good outside in the street, and you couldn't get a cup of coffee and a piece of coffee cake in this place, there was no place for black people to sit.

It was segregated.

It was the days of Jim Crow.

So they sit down.

Nothing happens.

They're not served a super about three hours.

They come back the next day and the local press is there and they sit again and they're not served by the way as I'm watching this in the North and tens of millions of my fellows up.

These students are very well dressed.

Pair perfectly caught, very clearly decent people.

This was wrong.

This wasn't America, the land of the free.

They come back the third day and the Ku Klux Klan is there.

Now the press is there.

So we're seeing this stuff and the clue.

Coke's fine is there and they start harassing.

These people are pouring stuff on him and being really nasty and saying racial serves.

And they're really disgusting young people, My generation also some of them but ugly.

And this thing, this sit in explodes all over the South in other cities, in Woolworth's and CREss Key in Walgreens.

All these lunch counters where you couldn't eat if you were black, where you couldn't have a cup of coffee, will you couldn't sit and all these places wouldn't hire you anyway.

Students began coming in war college students trained again, some of them and connected to the churches and now some white Stones boy, courageous.

The rest of us looked at these students.

They would not be hit on occasion.

Cold and hot water poured on them really harassed for sitting at this lunch counter.

They were trained to stay calm and stay cool, and we will look into this.

And who are these students?

The white ones are courageous beyond belief and so of the black ones and they just decent people.

Something's wrong here.

By the end of one month.

By the end of February, there are all over the South.

70,000 students involved this group from nothing to like this hugely, rapidly, but unfortunately, some of the students who began to do this we're not trained.

They didn't have to deal with aggressive, violent, disgusting behavior.

And they reacted.

And when they reacted, the police were there.

Bo arrest him right away.

Long sentences, huge finds, never arresting the guys who provoked them, the guys who hit them and said things and spat on them and poured coffee, never resting them.

Is this fair?

Is this America Not right, say a lot of us Northern students from the same generation.

This is wrong.

This behavior is wrong, something's very wrong.

And these students are brave.

They're kind of like heroes.

I'd like to look at Nashville, Tennessee, because it's a southern city and I'd like to show you what happened there.

That was part of the story We were all watching.

So there they were, sit ins across the city and many violent reactions, many, many students arrested.

They fill the jails and many acts of violence they would never arrested.

They just cops ignored them and then long finds, given huge sentences.

Given some cases, it took years for the Supreme Court to say No, no, no, This is not fair.

These people cannot be kept in jail, and that cannot be given these exorbitant fines.

And the sin in concept was spreading, particularly like the movie theaters.

There were a lot of movie theaters where blacks couldn't go.

They could undergo toe black movie theaters.

They were spreading this whole idea of just being there.

Some of the students being trained, some of the students, not the ones that not sometimes reacted to violence against them or tried to protect the women and worse things happen to them.

So National became the first city to desegregate.

They couldn't stand what was happening, and they desegregated their lunch counters in movie theaters and other places like that.

Look at Savannah, Georgia, another city that confronted citizens.

There was a street downtown where a ll the store is sold to black people and none of those stars were owned by blacks are even had blacks working there.

So they're the local students said Don't shop in these stores.

Whatever you do, boycott the stores.

This protest went on for 19 months, as I recall 20 months, and in the end everything became desegregated in Savannah, including the buses which role so boycotted.

People walked huge distances to avoid the buses because the buses were segregated, it was working.

And for a northern student like myself, these people were really impressive.

They really touched me.

They were succeeding without violence in changing America.

So America became free in New Orleans, which at that time I think about 40% black people again.

There was a whole section of the city where black shopped and totally white and unwilling to hire black.

So when they approach, is it look, shouldn't we be able to get a job here?

Also know and the stores basically went bankrupt.

Much of the stores in that section it down went bankrupt because of the boycott.

People really suffered in order to carry out this boycott with the adult and older populations and many whites to supporting this movement.

Crowds of angry white people attacked back people kicking people, knocking them to the ground, hitting them, Never arrested.

From what I could tell, the black people was still being arrested.

But eventually, after these 19 months, um, New Orleans desegregated.

So I have this piece of film in my collection because when I was making my television Siri's I collected little things that I thought were emotional.

And if you look at this where I've placed a piece of music next to it by a friend of mine because it's silent footage, I hope that my background would give you a sense of what it is that's going on.

And why so many Northerners said, This is wrong.

They're being treated wrong.

Things have to change.

You're under arrest.

Wait, Wait, Huh?