As the Israel-Palestine war drags on, students across the United States have used their college campuses as catalysts for change.
After over 100 protestors were arrested at Columbia University in April, students across multiple colleges and universities in Atlanta began to stand in solidarity with Palestine. This isn’t the first time that local colleges and universities are seeing spikes in student activism. The parallels between the sit-ins in downtown Atlanta in 1960 and the peaceful protests at nearby colleges in 2024 are shockingly similar.
The arrests made during the peaceful protests on Emory University’s campus caused outrage amongs college students in Atlanta. To show their support, students at Georgia Tech, Georgia State University, Morehouse College, Spelman College, Clark Atlanta University, and the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) organized protests as well, primarily through social media.
On May 1, SCAD Atlanta students walked out of their classes to demand SCAD’s divestment from “companies profiting off of Israeli apartheid.” An Instagram post about the protest, made by a group of activists in Atlanta called SCAD Students for Justice in Palestine (SCAD SJP), had been circulating since April 25. Two days before the scheduled walkout, SCAD sent an email to the student body warning that that the university would not tolerate any “attempts to disrupt campus operations.”
According to two of the students behind the SCAD SJP Instagram account, who wish to remain anonymous, students at SCAD were concerned about how the university might respond if they attended the protest.
“There were a lot of worries about what the police response might be because of what was happening at other schools,” they said. “But in the end, there was a huge turnout [at the Atlanta campus] and everyone did their part in resharing posts and spreading the word.”
This story is from a special collaboration between SCAD and Rough Draft Atlanta. To read more stories from SCAD students, visit our SCAD x Rough Draft hub.
SCAD SJP said that they have yet to receive any further contact from SCAD about their organization’s demands. The only response from the school so far has been the warning email, which SCAD SJP reported to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), describing it as “a veiled threat that could very easily be a violation of our rights.”
“Many of the statements and arguments being put out by university leaders condemning protests and encampments today mirror those condemning protestors for the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s,” said SCAD SJP.
SCAD SJP argued that Emory’s president wrongfully dismissing the protestors as outsiders eerily mirrored the actions of those that opposed the Montgomery Bus boycotts in the 1960s, who once described protestors as “outside agitators.” The New York Times reported that this term dates back to before the civil rights movement, and that it stems from “the racist notion that insurrectionary ideas had to come from somewhere else because Black people in the South could not come up with them on their own.”
SCAD SJP said that the goal of sit-ins and occupying public spaces has never been to create physical harm. “It’s about being seen and heard, and showing the institutions to which you contribute that you will not be silent regarding their corruption,” they said.
This ethos was also present in the Atlanta area in the spring of 1960, when Morehouse student Lonnie King first learned about the strides that college students in North Carolina were making towards desegregation. Inspired by the restaurant sit-ins in Greensboro, King organized a peaceful protest campaign with other local HBCUs to bring the same activism to Atlanta (per the New Georgia Encyclopedia). Similarly, SCAD SJP’s call to action on Instagram directly stated that the walkout at SCAD Atlanta was organized to support students at Columbia University.
As a result of the sit-ins led by students in downtown Atlanta during the Civil Rights movement (and the arrest of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at Rich’s department store in October 1960), the city of Atlanta outlawed segregation in public facilities in 1961 due to significant economic stress.
According to a 2010 interview with the late Lonnie King for Atlanta Magazinethe activist once said that in retrospect, the key to achieving this goal was staying true to the organization’s campus roots.
“Education has always been the artery for advancement, certainly in the South,” King said.
Although most of Atlanta’s student activists have moved off-campus for summer break, their ongoing fight to end the war between Israel and Palestine won’t stop at sit-ins and encampments. Instead, students are continuing to use their online social media platforms to organize local protests and advocate for Palestine until classes resume this fall.