Former Howard High School students who organized lunch counter sit-ins in downtown Chattanooga during the Civil Rights movement will be the featured guest panelists for Baylor School’s MLK Day celebration on Monday, Jan. 16.

Participants include Billy Edwards, an engineer with TVA; James Mapp, a local businessman and former president of the local NAACP; City Councilman Leamon Pierce; State Representative Joanne Favors; retired educator Virgil Roberson; Dr. Robert Taylor, Dean of the Howard University Medical School; and Paul Walker, a Baltimore attorney and former president of the Howard class of ’60. Filmaker Brian Cagle, who documented the event in his film “No Incident, No Service: The Chattanooga Sit-ins of 1960” will also be on hand.

The sit-ins began one afternoon in February 1960 with a small group of Howard students. A few days later 200 other students from Howard joined them, along with an increasing number of area white students who staged a counter-protest. Fire hoses were eventually needed to break up what the Chattanooga Times called "the most massive racial clash in the history of Chattanooga."

The panelists will discuss the lunch counter sit-ins and the impact the event had on their lives, as well as the community’s reaction to them at the time.

This year marks the 12th anniversary of Baylor's recognition of the holiday as a "day on" rather than the "day off" to recognize and promote the ideals the late Dr. King espoused. The day begins with the panel discussion before a full assembly of the student body and faculty, followed by activities for children from various community service sites, and small group discussions of Cagle’s film.

The day concludes with a the "Evolution of Afro-American Music," a performance highlighting music from Africa in the early 1600s and before, African song and dance, the birth of the blues, the history of Amazing Grace and the jazz and gospel quartets of the 1930s, and a selection of rhythm and blues songs of the 1960s and 1970s. Led by Baylor faculty member and musician Kenneth Parks, the local performers include Mawry & Company, deacons of the Antioch Primitive Baptist Church, Baylor faculty member and blues artist Ed Huey, Kelly Middleton, Ethel Graham, The Saint Paul Trio, and the rhythm and blues group "Love, Peace & Happiness.”