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Giles Lambertson is i columnist for the News* Record. Consider the lunch counter: a utilitarian structure with a rail for the feet, a stool for the bottom and a counter top for the elbows. Hardly of romantic construction, the simple luncheon counter nonetheless sparks warm — even hot — memories around Greensboro. It's been that way ever since that February afternoon 25 years ago when four A&T freshmen sat at one. And sat. And sat. This first historic sit-in happened at the local F.W. Wool- worth store, as everyone around here knows. Eighty years before, the national chain store's namesake had introduced to the world the fi ve-and- 10-cent retailing concept — the "dime store." By 1960, Wool- worth's annual sales topped a billion dollars. Greensboro's Woolworth store on Elm Street was not an insignificant part of the New York-based company. In 1960, the local unit ranked 64th in retail sales out of more than 2,000 Woolworth stores. It was one of the top company stores in the South. More to the point, it was the Number One Woolworth store in the region in restaurant sales. Thus, fate may have drawn the four A&T students to the busy Elm Street Woolworth lunch counter to launch their protest. And not the least fateful element in the little drama was the store's manager, Clarence Lee (C.L.) Harris. Harris, now 80, was and is a pre-eminent company man. Allegiance to an employer is not a weakness, generally speaking, and Harris' loyalty to Woolworth and to the "dime store" goes way back. After his mother died when he was an infant, Harris was raised by two aunts in Durham. One of the women worked at S.H. Kress & Co., and the other was employed by, as fate would have it, F.W. Woolworth. Harris began working at a Durham Woolworth while still in high school. He held that job and a second one for several years while attending Duke University where he learned something about accounting and business law. Greensboro News & Record,. Fri., Feb. 1, 1985J Woolworth Story When he finally came to Greensboro in 1955 to manage the Elm Street store, Harris was a competent retailer. Sales at the store had declined over the previous four years, but they turned around the year Harris arrived and reached a new peak in 1959. And then the four young men sat at his counter. Good management handbooks have not always had a section entitled, "How to Handle Civil Rights Protests." I presume that oversight has been corrected since the turbulent 1960s when blacks began to press for full citizenship. Even so,- Harris was not totally unprepared whert. the challenge arose. '"'."- In 1958, a year and a half before the first sit-in, Harris wrote the Woolworth district vice-president in Atlanta in regard to Greensboro's segregated eating customs. What if, he asked rhetorically, blacks someday requested service at the Elm Street store's counter? He answered his own question this way and suggested it as policy: No attempt should be made to restrict the individuals, and no arrest warrants for trespassing should be sought. Such protesters should be allowed to sit until they tire, Harris suggested, whereupon they would leave and likely not return. His supervisor agreed with the strategy. This was not by any stretch of imagination an enlightened policy. It was a nostrum that clearly did not reflect the spirit of the Christian teachings in Harris' Protestant church. But it did perfectly express the" company's policy of abiding by local custom in establishing individual store rules; And the custom in Greensboro in 1960 was that blacks and whites did not publicly sit and eat together. "Who was Woolworth to tell the community that they would have to accept blacks at their table?" concluded Harris. Yet the Woolworth manager says he immediately realized when students began their sit-in that his contingency planning was for naught. His method of dealing with the protests was hot going to work. The sit-in was too disciplined, for one thing, and too resourceful (the entire A&T student body was a potential pool of stool-sitters). Within 24 hours of the first incident at his lunch counter,,Harris says he could see that this protest was not just going to get up arid go away. '
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Full text | Giles Lambertson is i columnist for the News* Record. Consider the lunch counter: a utilitarian structure with a rail for the feet, a stool for the bottom and a counter top for the elbows. Hardly of romantic construction, the simple luncheon counter nonetheless sparks warm — even hot — memories around Greensboro. It's been that way ever since that February afternoon 25 years ago when four A&T freshmen sat at one. And sat. And sat. This first historic sit-in happened at the local F.W. Wool- worth store, as everyone around here knows. Eighty years before, the national chain store's namesake had introduced to the world the fi ve-and- 10-cent retailing concept — the "dime store." By 1960, Wool- worth's annual sales topped a billion dollars. Greensboro's Woolworth store on Elm Street was not an insignificant part of the New York-based company. In 1960, the local unit ranked 64th in retail sales out of more than 2,000 Woolworth stores. It was one of the top company stores in the South. More to the point, it was the Number One Woolworth store in the region in restaurant sales. Thus, fate may have drawn the four A&T students to the busy Elm Street Woolworth lunch counter to launch their protest. And not the least fateful element in the little drama was the store's manager, Clarence Lee (C.L.) Harris. Harris, now 80, was and is a pre-eminent company man. Allegiance to an employer is not a weakness, generally speaking, and Harris' loyalty to Woolworth and to the "dime store" goes way back. After his mother died when he was an infant, Harris was raised by two aunts in Durham. One of the women worked at S.H. Kress & Co., and the other was employed by, as fate would have it, F.W. Woolworth. Harris began working at a Durham Woolworth while still in high school. He held that job and a second one for several years while attending Duke University where he learned something about accounting and business law. Greensboro News & Record,. Fri., Feb. 1, 1985J Woolworth Story When he finally came to Greensboro in 1955 to manage the Elm Street store, Harris was a competent retailer. Sales at the store had declined over the previous four years, but they turned around the year Harris arrived and reached a new peak in 1959. And then the four young men sat at his counter. Good management handbooks have not always had a section entitled, "How to Handle Civil Rights Protests." I presume that oversight has been corrected since the turbulent 1960s when blacks began to press for full citizenship. Even so,- Harris was not totally unprepared whert. the challenge arose. '"'."- In 1958, a year and a half before the first sit-in, Harris wrote the Woolworth district vice-president in Atlanta in regard to Greensboro's segregated eating customs. What if, he asked rhetorically, blacks someday requested service at the Elm Street store's counter? He answered his own question this way and suggested it as policy: No attempt should be made to restrict the individuals, and no arrest warrants for trespassing should be sought. Such protesters should be allowed to sit until they tire, Harris suggested, whereupon they would leave and likely not return. His supervisor agreed with the strategy. This was not by any stretch of imagination an enlightened policy. It was a nostrum that clearly did not reflect the spirit of the Christian teachings in Harris' Protestant church. But it did perfectly express the" company's policy of abiding by local custom in establishing individual store rules; And the custom in Greensboro in 1960 was that blacks and whites did not publicly sit and eat together. "Who was Woolworth to tell the community that they would have to accept blacks at their table?" concluded Harris. Yet the Woolworth manager says he immediately realized when students began their sit-in that his contingency planning was for naught. His method of dealing with the protests was hot going to work. The sit-in was too disciplined, for one thing, and too resourceful (the entire A&T student body was a potential pool of stool-sitters). Within 24 hours of the first incident at his lunch counter,,Harris says he could see that this protest was not just going to get up arid go away. ' |