Alberta Journal of Educational Research, Vol. 61.1, Spring 2015, 106-109 Book Review From Sit-Ins to SNCC: The Student Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s Iwan Morgan and Philip Davies Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2013 Reviewed by: Nicholas Daniel Hartlep Illinois State University Morgan and Davies deserve credit for their careful documentation of the history of the 1960s student civil rights movement. The significance of this volume’s focus on student sit-ins is matched by the skill of the editing. Every chapter in From Sit-Ins to SNCC: The Student Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s contributes to (re)telling the history of the student non-violent movement through nuanced and informative lenses that update available historical perspectives. This contribution is best stated on the book’s back matter. The substantive essays in this collection not only delineate the role of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) over the course of the struggle for African American civil rights but also offer an updated perspective on the development and impact of the sit-in movement in light of both new research into organizational records and the personal papers of key actors. There are nine chapters in the volume each with potential to inspire critical race theorists, who will benefit from reading Morgan and Davies’ book because much of the material pertains to issues of the racial colour line versus the economic bottom line. Critical race pedagogues might ask, How did a white interest convergence (Bell, 1980) and a Cold War imperative influence segregation practices in the United States? Indeed, one of the sit-in movement’s main strengths was that it revealed the absurdity of public accommodations remaining segregated while other social spaces increasingly were not. L. C. Bates is cited as having said, The Negro is just not going to be satisfied with the situation where we can buy $1,000 worth of merchandise in one department of a store but he is considered trespassing and arrested if he attempts to spend one dime at the lunch counter. (p. 29) The nine chapters show how the student protests helped to invalidate the false pretense that blacks accepted being separate—a willfully ignorant notion that whites clung to in order to sustain their own racial ideologies. The book goes on to touch upon, but does not address in specific detail, the fact that student sit-ins protesting white-only lunchroom counters were not an isolated movement. Other protests during this same period of time included kneel-ins in churches, sleep-ins in motel lobbies, swim-ins in pools, wade-ins on restricted beaches, read- ins at public libraries, play-ins in parks, and watch-ins in movie theaters. In Chapter 1, Morgan provides background information about the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), including its original two names before the SNCC. The first name was the Temporary Coordinating Committee and then later, the Temporary Student 10 6 © 2015 The Governors of the University of Alberta