Chapel Hill Protesters Arrested and Attacked, Winter 1963

During the winter holidays in 1963-4, the arrest of four demonstrators at the Pines Restaurant sparked a renewed series of sit-ins across Chapel Hill. Local police arrested more than seventy people. Store owners fought back by pouring bleach and ammonia over demonstrators, urinating on them, and beating them with brooms. Later that winter, protesters blocked all exits out of town after a basketball game with Wake Forest. By early spring, more than one thousand sit-in arrest cases were pending in the local courts.