Black students punished for 1960 sit-in in Alabama get an apology

Just before noon, 29 black students from Alabama State College strolled into the Montgomery County Courthouse and into the basement snack room. The all-white customers were aghast — “The Negros are here!” one said — as the students crowded the restaurant, sat at the lunch counter and demanded to be served.

On that morning on Feb. 25, 1960, the students knew they were risking everything, perhaps even their lives in a defiant act in the heart of the Jim Crow South: the first known sit-in in Alabama. They were not beaten or thrown in jail, but the Alabama governor threw the book at them. He ordered nine students thought to be the ringleaders to be expelled. The rest were reprimanded.

For 58 years, those blemishes stayed on their academic records — until this month. In an unceremonious Alabama Board of Education meeting on May 10, the interim education superintendent announced that he had cleared them.