Greensboro Sit-In Summary

Due the human nature, the pursuits of liberty, justice, and happiness have always been major concerns of humans throughout the history regardless of the way individuals connected and organized. Before phones or emails were even invented, the underprivileged individuals or groups congregated through “close ties”. In the recent years, individuals with “weak ties” adopt a different approach on similar activism with the help of various social media. Although these events are meant for similar intentions, their different communication methods induce an enormous distinction on their impacts, says Malcolm Gladwell in “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted”. He depicts that the movements by people bonding with “strong-ties”(Gladwell 405) tend to impact the society with substantial advancement through “high-risk activism”. However, “weak ties seldom lead to high-risk

He depicts the close relationship of the first four students in the Greensboro Sit-In as an example of the “high-risk phenomena”(405) that “the more friends you had who were critical of the regime the more likely you were to join the protest” (406). He furthermore praises the Civil Rights Movement as a “fever” that “everyone wanted to go” and ‘happened without email, texting, Facebook, and Twitter”. This type of relationship not only attracts more participants, but also makes the tasks easier to complete. “Each group [such as black churches or NAACP] was task-oriented and coordinated its activities through authority structures,” reflects in a study by Aldon M. Morris, “individuals were held accountable for their assigned duties, and important conflicts were resolved by the minister, who usually exercised ultimate authority over the congregation”