Food and drink have such intense emotional significance that they are often linked with events that have nothing to do with nutrition. The perpetrators of the Boston Tea Party were angry not over tea but over taxation; the breadline and apple-sellers of the Great Depression became symbols of what was wrong with the economy. Guests at a dinner party usually leave a little food on the plate to let their hosts know they are full. A child who misbehaves is sent to bed without dinner, while obedience is rewarded with candy or ice cream. The simple fact of sitting down to eat together may convey important statements about a society. The civil-rights movement in the southern United States during the 1950s began as a dispute about the right of blacks not simply to eat at lunch counters but to sit down there with whites; blacks insisted on that right because in North American society people customarily sit down to eat only as equals.