A&T quartet re-enacts sit-ins at Woolworth's

              A&T quartet re-enacts
sit-ins at Woolworth's
By JIM SCHLOSSER
Staff Writer
Geneva Tisdale had just given her 15th
interview in about 15 minutes. She couldn't
ignore her job any longer Thursday
morning.
Pushing through the reporters and
photographers squeezed in behind the lunch
counter at Woolworth's in Greensboro,
Tisdale stuck her head into the dumbwaiter
and yelled to the second floor kitchen.
"We need more grits," she declared.
Tisdale, a Woolworth's cook, hadn't seen
such excitement in the store since that same
date 30 years before.
There were no reporters then, just four
bold black freshmen from N.C. A&T State
University who climbed onto stools at the
whites-only lunch counter and demanded
service.
When denied, they refused to leave. The
angry manager shut down the whole store
and ordered everyone out. The students
returned the next day and the next and the
next.
The Greensboro protest sparked sit-ins all
over the segregated South. The
Woolworth's event is now considered a
watershed in the nation's civil rights
movement.
On Thursday, the same four men —
David Richmond, Jibrell Khazan, Franklin
McCain and Joseph McNeil — returned for
a 30th anniversary commemoration.
They were watched by at least 100
photographers and reporters, a national TV
audience and two Woolworth's vice
presidents from New York, who were so
very glad to be of service.
"More coffee?" Aubrey Lewis, one of the
veeps, asked Richmond.
Getting coffee, grits and scrambled eggs
to the four wasn't easy because of news
media gridlock. Health inspectors would
have had a conniption. Photographers and
reporters stood on counters and squeezed
behind it to get bet" :ons.
"Excuse, me, excuse me," a man said,
pushing his way through the throng. "I have
to wire these guys for Good Morning
America." Instead of eating bites of food,
"The Greensboro Four " — as they were
called throughout the day — produced
sound bites that ware carried live on ABC's
Good Morning America show.
On Feb. 1, 1960, the four freshmen
walked to Woolworth's from A&T and
counter, then the unveiling of February
First Place, the new name for Sycamore
Street, which runs beside the Woolworth s
store. Then the implanting of bronze
footprints in the pavement m front of the
store and the acceptance of a plaque that
will be placed on the storefront.
They were joined at the store by about
150 A&T students who marched from the
CaAndS'then it was back to A&T for a
walked back. On Feb. 1,1990, they rode in a
stretch limousine.
At the counter, they patiently answered
the same questions over and over, including
what they tried to order 30 years ago.
"I wanted coffee and a doughnut," said
McCain, now a corporate executive in
Charlotte. "That's all, nothing else."
It was a busy day for the returning
celebrities.
First  came  the  re-enactment  at the
banquet, speeches, some hand-clapping
music from the A&T Gospel Choir and a
monument unveiling. David J. Miller,
A&T's student body president, delivered
one of the day's best lines.
"In sitting down, they stood Up," he
declared to a crowd of about 500 gathered
around the steps of the student union
building.
Earlier, the luncheon audience heard a
(See Sit-ins, A4)