By: Christina Atchison, Chris Rother, and Andrew Fein

By: Christina Atchison, Chris Rother, and Andrew Fein

Friday, October 4, 2013

Rhetorical Situation of Photograph


               This photograph, taken in February, 1960 by Jack Moebes, shows four young men participating in the Greensboro Sit-Ins.  In accordance with common practices of the time, most businesses were segregated, either having a separate area for black customers, or refusing to serve them outright.  In protest, when the Woolworth department store refused to serve these students, they refused to leave.  In the following days, more and more people joined in protest, spreading to other segregated establishments in Greensboro and across the south.  For the most part, these protests remained peaceful, in accordance with the more popular approach to the racial equality movement.  The sit-in movement in many ways achieved success.  Apart from the desegregation of many businesses and other public facilities, the movement swept through the media, improving the awareness of the issue.  This particular image was taken on the second day of the protest, February, 2, for the Greensboro Record.  The article accompanying the photograph seems to approach the event without bias, neither supporting, nor attacking the group. 


Chris Rother

2 comments:

  1. Is there any way to figure out what papers picked this up after the Record? This might provide some other interesting connections? And maybe some overlap with the song?

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  2. Is there a possibility that you could connect the look on these men's faces to how they felt about what was going on in the civil rights movement? How did they feel about the segregation and based on the pic, how did they feel about rebelling in such a nonviolent way? I just think you may want to find a more sound way to link a short analysis of the pic to the rhetorical situation.

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