Student Sit-In Organizers Expelled from Alabama State University

On february 29, 1960, alabama governor john patterson spoke out against an anti-segregation sit-in that was taking place in the montgomery county courthouse. Students from alabama state college, a traditionally black institution in montgomery, were in the fifth day of a sit-in at a segregated lunch counter in the courthouse. Governor patterson threatened to terminate the school's funding unless it expelled the student organizers.

He also warned that someone was likely to be killed if the protests continued. The next day, more than a thousand alabama state students marched on the capital. Then, the following day, the college expelled the nine student leaders of the courthouse sit-in. With word of the expulsions spreading, more than a thousand students pledged a mass strike. They also threatened to withdraw from school and continued staging days of demonstrations. 37 students were arrested. Meanwhile, six of the nine expelled students sued to be reinstated.

But a federal court upheld the expulsions as "justified and necessary" and barred the students' readmission to the college. It was not unusual for black-college officials at state-funded universities, under pressure from state officials, to expel student leaders of the sit-ins. At my own college in baton rouge, southern university officials expelled sit-in leaders, including me, in 1962.