Malcolm Gladwell 1960 Sit In Analysis

Malcolm Gladwell opens up the article by talking about the 1960 sit-in, at the North Carolina Woolworth’s a crucial moment in the 1960s civil right movement. The author discussed that 4 college students decided to sit at the counter in Woolworth’s that was for whites only, despite being pressured by the employees the students did not move. This sit-in caught a lot of attention the next day and more college students decided to join in on the sit in. This protest became a big phenomena and each day more and more students decided to join in on the sit in. Eventually, people from other towns decided to do their own sit-ins. By the end of that month over thousands participated in sit-ins across the American south, many people were arrested, but even more people joined in on the cause. Gladwell states, “These events in the early sixties became a civil-rights war that engulfed the South for the rest of the decade—and it happened without e-mail, texting, Facebook, or Twitter”(Why the revolution will not be tweeted).

According to Gladwell, some people claim to suggest that we are living in a time of revolution due to the tools of social media. People are now able to collaborate a lot easier, and thus people are now able to speak out against

Social media is not like that at all, it is based on networks and consumers based decisions. Gladwell states that a network-based movement group is very unsuccessful, having no real leader or goal, and usually causes the movement to be weak and full of internal strife. Network movements are only really good at making small splashes in society, not actually making a long-lasting change. The reason why Martin Luther King Jr. was successful was that his movement was well organized, had a strong leader, and had discipline and strategy something you cannot replicate with a network-based