On this day in 1963, a white mob attacked students staging a sit-in at Jackson Woolworth.

28 May 1963

The country’s most violent response to a sit-in occurred when a mob attacked black and white activists at the Woolworth’s lunch counter in Jackson, Mississippi.

One of them, Professor John Salter of Tougaloo College, said: “I was attacked with fists, brass knuckles and broken pieces of glass from sugar containers and burned with cigarettes. I am covered in blood and we were all covered in salt, sugar, mustard and various other things.”

Salter and fellow protesters Joan Trumpaeur and Anne Moody, both of whom were Tougaloo students, are seen in the famous photograph of the event. The protest took place eight days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that state enforcement of racial segregation in restaurants was a violation of the 14th Amendment.^th The change.

This event is described in MJ O’Brien’s book We Shall Not Be Moved: The Jackson Woolworth’s Sit-In and the Movement It Inspired.