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The Jack Spratt Coffee House sit-in was one of the first staged sit-in actions in the United States. On May 15, 1943,

On May 14, 1943, twenty-eight CORE members entered Jack Spratt in small groups, each consisting of several white people and one Black man or woman.^[1] They filled most of the seats in the small diner.^[2]

Two whites, who were not obviously members of our group and were sitting some distance from each other at the counter, were served. One, a well-dressed middle-aged woman, thanked the waitress when her food arrived, but sitting with hands in her lap, did not touch it. The other, a man, also older, promptly passed his food to the black beside him, who proceeded to eat it.

The woman in charge went to the lady who had been served and asked, "Is your dinner all right, ma'am?"

"Oh, I'm sure it's just fine."

"But you aren't eating it."

"I know. You see, it wouldn't be very polite for me to begin eating before my friends also had been served."

An elderly couple dining in one booth inquired what was going on. When informed by one of our people in the next booth, they discussed it between themselves and then passed the word to us that they agreed with us and would eat no more of their food until all of us were served. And they would not leave until we left.

This evoked a silent applause from the neighboring booths. Other customers, not in our groups, had stopped eating, too, or were eating very slowly; they did not want to miss any of this drama. They had, in effect, joined the sit-in out of curiosity if nothing else.

• Sit-in movement - list of sit-ins

• Shah, Aarushi H. (2012). "All of Africa Will Be Free Before We Can Get a Lousy Cup of Coffee: The Impact of the 1943 Lunch Counter Sit-Ins on the Civil Rights Movement". The History Teacher. 46 (1): 127–147. ISSN 0018-2745. Retrieved 14 July 2026.

Videos

• The Civic Knowledge Project Remembers 1942-3 - University of Chicago documentary about the early history of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) on the south side of Chicago focusing on the Jack Spratt sit-in
• Jack Spratt Coffee Shop Sit-In - short vignette about the sit-in, part of the 2013 WTTW documentary Chicago Time Machine

/Category:1943 in the United States /Category:1943 in Illinois /Category:1943 protests /Category:African-American history of Illinois /Category:Anti-black racism in Illinois /Category:Sit-in movement /Category:History of Chicago /Category:May 1943 in the United States