Kress
Building
• Downtown Baton
Rouge
• State Level
Significance
• Ethnic Heritage
• First Louisiana SitIns of Modern Civil
Rights Movement - 1960
Kress Building,
East Baton
Rouge Parish
.
Party wall, masonry
construction
Remodeled 1930s in
Moderne style
“L” shaped footprint
Third Street
Facade
Reads as two stories
Windows replaced; some
openings boarded over
Main Street
Facade
Partly encircles Levy
Building
L-Shaped plan reflects
growth & enlargement
Reads as four stories
Architectural features
more restrained
Windows also replaced
The Sit-In Movement
Greensboro, North Carolina, February 1, 1960
Non-Violent Direct Action
vs.
Lengthy Court Cases
Well-behaved & non-violent no matter what
By end of February sit-ins in 15 cities
in five states:
North and South Carolina
Tennessee
Florida
Virginia
100 cities by November 1960
Baton Rouge
Sit-Ins
March 28, 1960
Kress Department store
Sitman’s Drug Store (lost)
Greyhound Bus Station
(lost)
Seven Southern students peacefully
challenge segregated lunch counter
Weapons
Search of
Protester
Felton
Valdry
Paddy wagon – jail transport – on the right
Janette Hoston Harris with her jail
identification bracelet
Opposed sitins as threat to
university. . .
Expelled
protesters
Southern
President
Felton G. Clark
Withdraw or stay in school?
Southern
students
fill out
withdrawal
slips
Importance of Sit-Ins
Scholars recognize as distinct and significant
phase of Civil Rights Movement
No more second class citizenship
Inspired others to act via non-violent direct action
Accelerated pace of social change
New and younger class of black leaders
Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee
Led to court cases that helped overturn segregation
Garner vs. Louisiana
December 1961
Thurgood Marshall & A. P. Tureaud
U.S. Supreme Court . . .
• overturned convictions of students
for disturbing the peace
• affirmed the principle that a
licensed public business could not
discriminate or operate in a
segregated fashion.
Exceptional Significance
• Only four years shy of 50 year threshold
• Civil Rights Movement is “period of time
which can be logically examined
together.”— Bulletin 22
• Sit-In Movement and Baton Rouge Sit-Ins
are subjects of scholarly study. Movement
called “watershed in the history of black
protest” in U.S.
Kress Building of
Exceptional
Significance to
Louisiana and
eligible for
National Register