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“In a gentle way, you can shock the world.”
-Mahatma Gandhi
As with Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday in January, much of Black History Month focuses on that particular civil rights leader’s life and achievements. Much attention is also paid to Rosa Parks and her refusal to be confined to the back of a bus. But what also deserves attention was a protest that began 61 years ago this week with the simple act of ordering a cup of coffee.
The protest’s roots can be found in August 1939, when the African-American attorney Samuel Wilbert Tucker organized the Alexandria Library sit-in in Virginia (now the Alexandria Black History Museum). In 1942, the Congress of Racial Equality sponsored sit-ins in Chicago, as they did in St. Louis in 1949 and Baltimore in 1952. The Dockum Drug Store sit-in in 1958 in Wichita, Kansas, was successful in ending segregation at every Dockum Drug Store in Kansas and a sit-in in Oklahoma City the same year led the Katz Drug Stores to end its segregation policy.
Then came the actions of the Greensboro Four. They were Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair Jr., and David Richmond, all young black students at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in their freshman year who often met in their dorm rooms to discuss the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi and what they could do to stand against segregation. They specifically wanted to change the segregation policies of F. W. Woolworth Company in their North Carolina city because Woolworth’s was, at that time, a national, high-profile chain of retail stores that also served food. When the four men decided that it was time to take action against segregation they came up with the simple plan of occupying seats at the local Woolworth’s, asking to be served, and when they were inevitably denied service, refusing to leave. They would repeat this process every day for as long as it would take. Their goal was to attract widespread media attention to the issue, forcing the Woolworth Company to implement desegregation.
On February 1, 1960, at 4:30 p.m., the four men sat down at the 66-seat L-shaped stainless-steel lunch counter inside the Woolworth Company store on South Elm Street. The young men already had purchased toothpaste and other products from a desegregated counter at the store with no problems, but were then refused service at the store's lunch counter when they each asked for a cup of coffee. Blair pointed out that they had just purchased other items in the store. However, the store’s manager, Clarence Harris, asked the men to leave. When they would not budge he called his supervisor, who told him, "They'll soon give up, leave, and be forgotten.” Harris allowed the students to stay and did not call police to evict them. The four freshmen stayed until the store closed that night, and then went back to the North Carolina A&T University campus where they recruited more students to join them the next morning.
The next day more than 20 black students (including four women) joined the sit-in. This group sat with schoolwork to stay busy from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. They were again refused service and were harassed by the white customers at the Woolworth store. However, the sit-ins made local news on the second day, with reporters, a TV cameraman, and police officers present throughout. Back on campus that night, the Student Executive Committee for Justice was organized, and the committee sent a letter asking the president of F.W. Woolworth: “We the undersigned are students at the Negro college in the city of Greensboro. Time and time again we have gone into Woolworth stores in Greensboro. We have bought thousands of items at the hundreds of counters in your stores. Our money was accepted without rancor or discrimination, and with politeness towards us, when at a long counter just three feet away our money is not acceptable because of the color of our skin. We are asking your company to take a firm stand to eliminate discrimination. We firmly believe that God will give you courage and guidance in solving the problem.”
On February 3, the number grew to over 60, including students from Dudley High School. An estimated one-third of the protesters were women, many of them students from Bennett College, a historically black women's college in Greensboro. White customers heckled the black students, who read books and studied, while the lunch counter staff continued to refuse service. North Carolina's official chaplain of the Ku Klux Klan, George Dorsett, as well as other members of the Klan were present. The F.W. Woolworth national headquarters said that the company would "abide by local custom" and maintain its segregation policy.
The next day, more than 300 people took part and they filled the entire seating area at the lunch counter. Three white female students from the nearby Woman's College of the University of North Carolina also joined the protest. Organizers agreed to expand the sit-in protests to include the lunch counter at Greensboro's S. H. Kress & Co. store that day. Students, college administrators, and representatives from F.W. Woolworth and Kress met to discuss the matter but nothing came of it.
On February 5, the pressure on the Greensboro Four intensified when 50 white men sat at the counter. Again, more than 300 protestors were at the store. Another meeting between students, college officials, and store representatives took place, and again there was no resolution. The store representatives were frustrated that only certain segregated stores were being protested and asked for intervention by the college administrators, while some administrators suggested a temporary closure of the counters.
The following day, a Saturday, over 1400 North Carolina A&T students met in the Richard B. Harrison Auditorium on campus. They voted to continue the protests and went to the Woolworth’s, filling up the store. Around 1 p.m., a bomb threat set for 1:30 pm was delivered by phone to the store, causing the protesters to head to the Kress store, which immediately closed along with the Woolworth store.
Ignoring the intimidation, the protestors arrived day after day, week after week. On March 16, President Dwight D. Eisenhower expressed his concern for those who were fighting for their human and civil rights, saying that he was "deeply sympathetic with the efforts of any group to enjoy the rights of equality that they are guaranteed by the Constitution." But that was as far as Eisenhower went. It was an election year and he did not want to cost his Vice President, Richard Nixon, any votes in the South.
The sit-in movement then spread to other Southern cities and states. In Nashville, students attained desegregation of the downtown department store lunch counters in that May. Most of these protests were peaceful, but there were instances of violence. In Chattanooga, tensions rose between blacks and whites and fights broke out. The sit-ins spread to other forms of public accommodation, including transport facilities, swimming pools, libraries, art galleries, parks and beaches, and museums.
As the sit-ins continued, tensions continued to rise in Greensboro. Students began a far-reaching boycott of all stores with segregated lunch counters. Sales at the boycotted stores dropped by a third, leading their owners to abandon segregation policies. On Monday, July 25, 1960, after nearly $200,000 in losses ($1.7 million in today’s dollars), store manager Clarence Harris asked four black employees, Geneva Tisdale, Susie Morrison, Anetha Jones, and Charles Bess, to change out of their work clothes and order a meal at the counter. They were, quietly, the first to be served at a Woolworth lunch counter. Most stores were soon desegregated. It was not until the Civil Rights Act of 1964, though, that desegregation in public accommodations became law.
As people like Mahatma Gandhi discovered, a simple act can have large consequences -- even just ordering a cup of coffee.
What of the Greensboro Four? After the sit-ins, David Richmond eventually dropped out of A&T and found a job in Greensboro. He received multiple death threats and eventually left Greensboro, moving to Franklin, North Carolina. He had gotten married while at A&T, got divorced, remarried, and divorced again. He returned to Greensboro to take care of his parents but had a hard time finding employment while dealing with the label of “troublemaker.” He was eventually able to find a job as a janitor at the Greensboro Health Care Center and died in 1990 at 49.
After graduating from A&T, Franklin McCain moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, where he worked at the Celanese Corporation, a chemical manufacturer, for 35 years. He served as a member of the boards of trustees for both North Carolina A&T and North Carolina Central Universities as well as the Board of Visitors of Bennett College and the Board of Governors of the University of North Carolina. McCain was also known for meeting with local Charlotte teenagers and encouraging them to stay in school. In 2014, McCain died in Greensboro six days after his 73rd birthday.
Ezell Blair moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 1965 where he worked as a teacher and counselor for the developmentally challenged. In 1968, he joined the Islamic Center of New England and changed his name to Jibreel Khazan. Today, at 79, Khazan is an oral historian and lecturer.
Joseph McNeil, now 78, had a long career in the U.S. Air Force, retiring as a major general and was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal.
Tom Clavin is the bestselling author/co-author of 18 books, including, most recently, “Tombstone: The Earp Brothers, Doc Holliday, and the Vendetta Ride From Hell,” the concluding volume in the “Frontier Lawmen” trilogy. For more info, go to tomclavin.com. “Blood and Treasure: Daniel Boone and the Fight for America’s First Frontier,” the next collaboration with Bob Drury, will be published in April by St. Martin’s Press.