Stephen Schneider publishes essay on the Louisville sit-in movement
Cover art of "Like Wildfire"
Dr. Stephen Schneider recently published a chapter titled "Nothing New For Easter: Rhetoric, Collective Action, and the Louisville Sit-In Movement." It appears in the anthology Like Wildfire: The Rhetoric of the Civil Rights Sit-Ins, edited by Sean Patrick O'Rourke and Lesli K. Pace and published by The University of South Carolina Press.
From the publisher: "The sit-ins of the American civil rights movement were extraordinary acts of dissent in an age marked by protest. By sitting in at "whites only" lunch counters, libraries, beaches, swimming pools, skating rinks, and churches, young African Americans and their allies put their lives on the line, fully aware that their actions would almost inevitably incite hateful, violent responses from entrenched and increasingly desperate white segregationists . . . In Like Wildfire, editors Sean Patrick O'Rourke and Lesli K. Pace seek to clarify and analyze the power of civil rights sit-ins as rhetorical acts--persuasive campaigns designed to alter perceptions of apartheid social structures and to change the attitudes, laws, and policies that supported those structures. These cohesive essays from leading scholars offer a new appraisal of the origins, growth, and legacy of the sit-ins, which has gone largely ignored in scholarly literature . . . By focusing on the persuasive power of demanding space, the contributors articulate the ways in which the protestors' battle for basic civil rights shaped social practices, laws, and the national dialogue. O'Rourke and Pace maintain that the legacies of the civil rights sit-ins have been many, complicated, and at times undervalued."
Stephen Schneider is Associate Professor of English and the author of You Can’t Padlock an Idea: Rhetorical Education at the Highlander Folk School, 1932-1961 (University of South Carolina Press, 2014). He is also the co-editor, with Craig N. Owens, of The Shaken and the Stirred: The Year's Work in Cocktail Culture, which will be published in September by Indiana University Press.
