The Savannah Protest Movement was an American campaign led by civil rights activists to bring an end to the system of racial segregation in Savannah, Georgia. The movement began in 1960 and ended in 1963.

Throughout the first half of the 20th century, African Americans in Savannah were subject to Jim Crow laws that enforced a strict system of racial segregation whereby they were not allowed to use many of the same facilities used by white people. However, African Americans attempted to push back against this system, and by the 1940s, the NAACP, under the leadership of Ralph Mark Gilbert, organized voter registration drives among the black population and negotiated agreements with moderate city officials to secure certain improvements for the community, including the hiring of African American police officers and greater investment in infrastructure, such as road repairs and the creation of a new high school. By the early 1960s, W. W. Law had become the president of the local NAACP chapter, with Hosea Williams serving as vice president and head of the local youth council.

On March 16, 1960, the movement began with a series of sit-ins conducted by several dozen student activists at segregated lunch counters throughout downtown Savannah, resulting in the arrest of three protestors at Levy's Department Store. Over the next several months, protestors continued to target segregated facilities with sit-in related protests, in addition to marches, pickets, and other forms of direct action. Additionally, Williams organized the Chatham County Crusade for Voters to mobilize the city's black voting bloc to push for change from the city government. By October 1961, a partial agreement was reached to desegregate some facilities in the city, though protesting continued to achieve complete desegregation. By mid-1963, Williams, who by this time had become affiliated with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), began to hold nighttime marches that saw hundreds of arrests and an instance of rioting that resulted in the burning of at least one building and the mobilization of the Georgia National Guard. Following this, white businessmen in the city agreed to a full desegregation of the city and the city government, under Mayor Malcolm Roderick Maclean, agreed to rescind all remaining segregation ordinances. This officially came into effect on October 1, bringing an end to the movement.

The Savannah movement is notable among protests of the civil rights movement for its length, its achievement of full desegregation, and for the general lack of violence when compared to other movements, such as the Birmingham campaign. Following the movement, Williams left Savannah to become a member of the SCLC national board, where he led a nationwide voter registration program during the 1960s. Meanwhile, in Savannah, Law served as NAACP local president until retiring in 1976. In 2016, the Georgia Historical Society installed a Georgia historical marker to commemorate the protest movement at the site of the former Levy's Department Store.

The city of Savannah, Georgia, was founded in 1733, making it the oldest city in the state and one of the oldest in the United States. At its founding, the city was a farming community where slavery was banned, though the institution became legal in 1750 and, in the following years, Savannah became a major port city in the Atlantic slave trade. During the American Civil War, the city was captured by General William Tecumseh Sherman in December 1864 at the conclusion of his March to the Sea, leaving the city relatively undamaged. The following month, while still in the city, Sherman issued Special Field Orders No. 15, which gave newly freed black people confiscated land from plantations, though these orders were reversed later that year by President Andrew Johnson. In the latter half of the 19th century, after the Reconstruction era, African Americans in the Southern United States faced economic and political persecution and discrimination under a system of laws known as Jim Crow laws.

In Savannah, one of the earliest examples of organized opposition to racial discrimination in the post-Reconstruction era came in the 1890s, when a boycott prevented the city's buses from becoming racially segregated. The city's public transit would remain one of the only racially integrated systems in the region until they became segregated in 1907. By the early 1900s, Savannah boasted numerous African American businesses, including seven banks, with the city's black community centered on West Broad Street, near Savannah Union Station. Additionally, several chapters of national African American organizations were founded prior to the end of World War I, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), whose offices were on West Broad Street, the National Negro Business League, and the National Urban League. This coincided with a statewide growth in these organizations, which established chapters in other Georgia cities, such as Albany, Atlanta, and Augusta. However, during the Interwar period, violent opposition from white Americans, including multiple lynchings, as well as the Great Depression, seriously hurt these organizations' efforts and led to the closure of many local chapters. By the 1930s, organized protest against discrimination in the state occurred almost exclusively in either Atlanta or Savannah, and by 1940, according to historian Mark Newman, the NAACP in Georgia was "moribund". The previous year, the charter for the Savannah NAACP chapter had been revoked due to a precipitous decline in membership.

The Great Depression and, later, the United States's involvement in World War II contributed to the migration of approximately 1 million African Americans from rural areas to the urban centers of the American South, such as Atlanta and Savannah, and by 1940, one-third of the 1 million African Americans in Georgia lived in municipalities with populations greater than 5,000. The war contributed to a surge in employment for African Americans, with many in Savannah finding employment in the war effort and in the city's shipyard. Across the Southern United States, black Americans gained 1 million new jobs during the war. By 1946, Savannah had over 100 black-owned businesses and a growing black middle class, which contributed to a new, developing opposition to discrimination. According to historian Stephen Tuck, "The emergence of small pockets of relatively prosperous black Georgians in cities, therefore, provided the environment from which civil rights leadership could spring". Also during the war, over 100,000 black men were stationed in several military bases in the state. In several bases, such as Camp Gordon near Augusta, Fort Benning near Columbus, and Camp Stewart near Savannah, these African American enlisted men became involved in several instances of militant opposition to discrimination, including a mutiny of black soldiers at Camp Stewart caused primarily by poor living conditions. These acts were, according to Tuck, some of the first acts of militant opposition to discrimination witnessed by African Americans in the state, and following the war, many black veterans became active participants in further anti-discrimination protests.

During the 1940s, several political developments occurred in Georgia at the state level that increased African Americans' electoral opportunities. First, in 1943, the voting age was reduced from 21 to 18. Then, in 1944, the state's white primary system was abolished. Finally, in 1945, the poll tax was ended. Some of these electoral reforms were implemented by Georgia Governor Ellis Arnall, a political moderate who had beaten incumbent Eugene Talmadge in the 1942 election thanks to support from white liberals. Around this same time, activists in the state, especially consisting of black women, began to organize voter registration drives and pushed for the election of moderate politicians at the local level. Black civic leaders would then negotiate with these elected officials and were able to obtain concessions and agreements that included increased funding for public black schools and having black jurors on court cases. Between 1940 and 1946, the number of African Americans registered to vote in the state rose from roughly 20,000 in 1940 to 135,000 in 1946. Voter registration drives were especially successful in the three largest cities in the state: Atlanta, Savannah, and Augusta.