[sit-in] 
| 1. | an organized passive protest, esp. against racial segregation, in which the demonstrators occupy seats prohibited to them, as in restaurants and other public places. |
| 2. | any organized protest in which a group of people peacefully occupy and refuse to leave a premises: Sixty students staged a sit-in outside the dean's office. |
| 3. | sit-down strike. |
| sit-in (sĭt'ĭn') n.
|
sit-in
a tactic of nonviolent civil disobedience. The demonstrators enter a business or a public place and remain seated until forcibly evicted or until their grievances are answered. Attempts to terminate the essentially passive sit-in often appear brutal, thus arousing sympathy for the demonstrators among moderates and noninvolved individuals. Following Mahatma Gandhi's teaching, Indians employed the sit-in to great advantage during their struggle for independence from the British. Later, the sit-in was adopted as a major tactic in the civil-rights struggle of American blacks; the first prominent sit-in occurred at a Greensboro (North Carolina) lunch counter in 1960. Student activists adopted the tactic later in the decade in demonstrations against the Vietnam War.
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