ABSTRACT The purpose of this thesis is to examine the Sit-in movement in Chattanooga, Tennessee during the early 1960s in the context of a perpetuating tradition of protest in the African American community spanning more than a century. The study will also illustrate how it was a unique episode in the annals of the Civil Rights Movement in that it was strictly orchestrated by high school students without the input or support of adults, yet it has largely been neglected by historians. The research conducted includes oral histories, newspaper clippings, private manuscript collections, books, videos, and periodicals which provide great insight into the minds, motives, and methods of those involved. The study also depicts the galvanizing spirit, ignited by the students, which compelled the community to act and resulted in monumental social changes.

This thesis examines the sit-in demonstrations that used direct action and civil disobedience to target segregation at store lunch counters. The Nashville demonstrations were the last sit-in protests to occur that are discussed in this thesis, which also examines the protests in Wichita and Greensboro. Historians argue that the Wichita and Greensboro sit-ins were the most important demonstrations of their kind. The movement in Wichita was the first protest to end segregation policies at targeted stores, and the Greensboro protests led to a direct action movement in over fifty other cities targeting lunch counters. However, the Nashville based sit-ins surpassed the other two cities in planning and organization, demonstrations, and ending results following the protests. This thesis will provide a historical analysis of events in America’s past that led to the sit-in movement; the thesis will also examine the movements within the three cities.

Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff in their breakthrough work, The Race Beat, contended that mainstream newspapers—white newspapers—largely ignored the black community until the 1950s and 1960s when editors gradually began opening their pages to reports of racial discrimination and the emerging protest against segregation. This coverage significantly shaped the civil rights movement, Roberts and Klibanoff argued. “Unfamiliar Streets” offers nuance to their narrative. Examining the local coverage of the 1960 Chattanooga sit-in movement as a case study, Jessie Harris contends that reporters and editors, although they should be credited for extensively covering the sit-ins, ultimately cared more for civilities than civil rights. Their coverage detailed the protests, fights, and mobs downtown, but only rarely provided perspectives of student demonstrators and rarely called attention to the injustices of segregation.

This thesis investigates if Distributed Denial-of-Service attacks constitute a valid form ofcivil disobedience online. For this purpose a multi-dimensional framework is established,drawing on Brownlee’s paradigm case and classical theory of civil disobedience. Threedifferent examples of DDoS attacks are then examined using this framework - the attacksfrom the Electronic Disturbance Theater in support of the Zapatista movement;Anonymous’ Operation Payback; Electrohippies’ attack against the World TradeOrganization. Following the framework, none of these DDoS attacks are able to constitute acivilly disobedient act online. The thesis then goes on and identifies four key issues, drawingon the results from the examples: The loss of 'individual presence', no inimitable feature ofDDoS attacks, impeding free speech and the danger of western imperialism. It concludes thatDDoS attacks cannot and should not be seen as a form of civil disobedience online. Thethesis further proposes that online actions, in order to be seen as civilly disobedient actsonline, need two additional features: An 'individual presence' of the protesters online tocompensate for the remoteness of cyberspace and an inimitable feature in order to berecognizable by society. Further research should investigate with this extended framework ifthere are valid forms of civil disobedience online.

The Nashville Civil Rights Movement was one of the most dynamic local movements of the early 1960s, producing the most capable student leaders of the period 1960 to 1965. Despite such a feat, the historical record has largely overlooked this phenomenon. What circumstances allowed Nashville to produce such a dynamic movement whose youth leadership of John Lewis, Diane Nash, Bernard LaFayette, and James Bevel had no parallel? How was this small cadre able to influence movement developments on local and a national level? In order to address these critical research questions, standard historical methods of inquiry will be employed. These include the use of secondary sources, primarily Civil Rights Movement histories and memoirs, scholarly articles, and dissertations and theses. The primary sources used include public lectures, articles from various periodicals, extant interviews, numerous manuscript collections, and a variety of audio and video recordings. No original interviews were conducted because of the availability of extensive high quality interviews. This dissertation will demonstrate that the Nashville Movement evolved out of the formation of independent Black churches and college that over time became the primary sites of resistance to racial discrimination, starting in the Nineteenth Century. By the late 1950s, Nashville’s Black college attracted the students who became the driving force of a local movement that quickly established itself at the forefront of the Civil Rights Movement. Nashville’s forefront status was due to an intentional leadership training program based upon nonviolence. As a result of the training, leaders had a profound impact upon nearly every major movement development up to 1965, including the sit-ins, the Freedom Rides, the March on Washington, the birth of SNCC, the emergence of Black Power, the direction of the SCLC after 1962, the thinking of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Birmingham campaign, and the Selma voting rights campaign. In addition, the Nashville activists helped eliminate fear as an obstacle to Black freedom. These activists also revealed new relationship dynamics between students and adults and merged nonviolent direct action with voter registration, a combination considered incompatible.