ngage in civil
disobedience as a means of challenging those laws. Civil disobedience was
not to be understood merely as law-breaking. Instead, King said that it
was based in a belief in law and also in a belief in the necessity to
obey the law. However, when a particular law was grossly unjust, that
unjust law itself endangered society's respect for law in general. If the
unjust law could not be changed through normal legal channels, deliberate
breaking of that specific law might be justified. Because the person
engaging in civil disobedience did believe in the value of law, he would
break the unjust law openly, and he would willingly accept the
consequences for breaking it. He would participate in law-breaking and
accept its penalty as a means of drawing the attention of the community
to the immorality of that specific law.

Largely inspired by the successful Montgomery bus boycott, mass protests
and other direct action techniques began to spread rapidly throughout the
South and even into the North. King was concerned that those using the
technique should fully understand its meaning and value. Otherwise, he
feared that it might be used carelessly and thereby distort its moral and
redemptive quality. Therefore, King and a number of his supporters formed
the Southern Christian Leadership Conference as an organization to spread
these ideas and to provide help to any community which became involved in
massive, nonviolent resistance protests.

On February 1, 1960, four Negro students from the Agricultural and
Technical College in Greensboro, North Carolina, entered a Woolworth's
variety store and purchased several items. Then, they sat down at its
lunch counter, which served whites only. When they were refused service,
they took out their textbooks and began to do their homework. This
protest immediately made local news. The next day, they were joined by a
large number of fellow students.

In a matter of weeks, student sit-ins were occurring at segregated lunch
counters all across the South. College and high school students by the
thousands joined the Civil Rights Movement. These students felt the need
to form their own organization to mobilize and facilitate the spontaneous
demonstrations which were springing up everywhere. This resulted in the
formation of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Comittee. The S.C.L.C.
and S.N.C.C. came to be the leading organizations in the Southern states.
C.O.R.E.--Congress of Racial