American blacks protested unequal treatment in public accommodations as early as 1866, when blacks in Tennessee boarded street cars in Nashville and refused to sit in the section designated for them. In 1942 the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) organized sit-ins and pickets to protest racial accommodations in public accommodations. Sit-ins occurred in 1950, 1958, and 1959 in Washington, D.C.; Wichita, Kansas; and St. Louis, Missouri.