[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.
|
A form of nonviolent protest, employed during the 1960s in the civil rights movement and later in the movement against the Vietnam War. In a sit-in, demonstrators occupy a place open to the public, such as a racially segregated (see segregation) lunch counter or bus station, and then refuse to leave. Sit-ins were designed to provoke arrest and thereby gain attention for the demonstrators' cause.
Note: The civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., defended such tactics as sit-ins in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”
