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Greensboro: Where The Movement Began Reviewed by M^^ Edwin M. Yoder Jr. [LUNCH AT THE FIVE AND TEN. By Miles Wolff Jr. Stein and Day. 191 pages. $5.95. Woolworth's Lunch Counter, 1960 Miles Wolff Jr. It was never obvious why Greensboro, of all the smaller cities M the mid-South, should have given birth to the lunch- counter sit-ins of February 1960. The town has its special qualities, of course — among them a becoming c 1 i m a t e of political tolerance that may be traced to the influence of its 200-year-old Quaker community. Yet the Woolworth's lunch counter was set then, as it is today, in a/ decaying downtown of unprepos4 sessing character — so much sol that Louis Mumford, according to a local tale, once called us "the parking-lot city," while years earlier Will Rogers had been reminded by Greensboro's lone skyscraper of the first tgpth in a baby's gaping mouth.Fl<\ Conservative \£*r North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College, the all- Negro institution that supplied the sit-inners (four freshmen, three of them Greensboro boys) had been a conservative school, firmly set in the Southern pattern of educational paternalism and overwhelmingly North Carolinian in flavor: no headquarters of the "outside agitators" on whom many a southerner tends to blame any challenge to stale or senseless custom. In the late Fifties, both Dr. King and Thur- good Marshall had been denied permission to speak on the A&T campus; both were "too controversial." I But it is not the purpose of Miles Wolff Jr., the young author of this remarkable account, to delve into the remote origins of the sit-inr, rather to examine their impact on the city and on ] the region. According to Mr. Wolff it was Ralph Johns, a local habeWasher and political "character" (he once tried out in Hollywood for the role of Rudolph Valentino) who prodded the four A&T freshmen to take their seats p o 1 i t e 1 y at Wool- worth's all-white lunch counter. 'Massive' Whoever inspired them, the four were pioneers with a future. They began "the most massive demonstration in the | history of the South" — a movement that spred to 68 cities in 13 states by summer. "The four boys (Wolff writes) . . sat down at the Woolworth counter at a time when the world situation was relatively stable, when there was little news to distract readers ... in a moderate Southern city, conscious of its image and unwilling to have the students arrested or inflict violence on them ... More important than the time or place was the form. Here was a protest against one of the most obvious forms of discrimination, in stores that invited Negroes to shop." Although measurable community sentiment seemed to agree I with them that it was unjust to ask Negroes to stand at a count- where whites could sit, in a store where they were otheBgiee served on the same terms^rne city was slow to act. Negotiations drew out; the sit-ins came and went; byx April, i the first 'arrests for "trespass'toccurred. Woolworth's local manager, no racist, felt that his store had been "singled out"; he would integrate if other downtown res- ta feared loss of white customers! could be equitably distributed.! Woolworth's had no national pol-f icy; it adhered to "local custom." ^P . Lonely action (Finally, neither the City Coun-i cil (although it had been inte-| m grated since 1951) nor the! ChambeT^>fCommerce viewed | the sit-ins, as they would today, as a clearly focused issue of I wide implications. It was, in fact, the lonely initiative of | Councilman Ed Zane, a plain- spoken Tennessean and a vice president of the mammoth Burlington Industries textile firm, that led to the appointment of a | negotiating committee. Other- wise the sit-in s might have I wound down as vacation approached or exploded into riot. ' Violence was a constant possi- b i 1 i t y. Young white toughs I (county boys, the city folk said) crowded to the stores to razz the demonstrators, occupying | lunch counter stools in a "counter sit-in." In neighboring Rich-
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Full text | Greensboro: Where The Movement Began Reviewed by M^^ Edwin M. Yoder Jr. [LUNCH AT THE FIVE AND TEN. By Miles Wolff Jr. Stein and Day. 191 pages. $5.95. Woolworth's Lunch Counter, 1960 Miles Wolff Jr. It was never obvious why Greensboro, of all the smaller cities M the mid-South, should have given birth to the lunch- counter sit-ins of February 1960. The town has its special qualities, of course — among them a becoming c 1 i m a t e of political tolerance that may be traced to the influence of its 200-year-old Quaker community. Yet the Woolworth's lunch counter was set then, as it is today, in a/ decaying downtown of unprepos4 sessing character — so much sol that Louis Mumford, according to a local tale, once called us "the parking-lot city," while years earlier Will Rogers had been reminded by Greensboro's lone skyscraper of the first tgpth in a baby's gaping mouth.Fl<\ Conservative \£*r North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College, the all- Negro institution that supplied the sit-inners (four freshmen, three of them Greensboro boys) had been a conservative school, firmly set in the Southern pattern of educational paternalism and overwhelmingly North Carolinian in flavor: no headquarters of the "outside agitators" on whom many a southerner tends to blame any challenge to stale or senseless custom. In the late Fifties, both Dr. King and Thur- good Marshall had been denied permission to speak on the A&T campus; both were "too controversial." I But it is not the purpose of Miles Wolff Jr., the young author of this remarkable account, to delve into the remote origins of the sit-inr, rather to examine their impact on the city and on ] the region. According to Mr. Wolff it was Ralph Johns, a local habeWasher and political "character" (he once tried out in Hollywood for the role of Rudolph Valentino) who prodded the four A&T freshmen to take their seats p o 1 i t e 1 y at Wool- worth's all-white lunch counter. 'Massive' Whoever inspired them, the four were pioneers with a future. They began "the most massive demonstration in the | history of the South" — a movement that spred to 68 cities in 13 states by summer. "The four boys (Wolff writes) . . sat down at the Woolworth counter at a time when the world situation was relatively stable, when there was little news to distract readers ... in a moderate Southern city, conscious of its image and unwilling to have the students arrested or inflict violence on them ... More important than the time or place was the form. Here was a protest against one of the most obvious forms of discrimination, in stores that invited Negroes to shop." Although measurable community sentiment seemed to agree I with them that it was unjust to ask Negroes to stand at a count- where whites could sit, in a store where they were otheBgiee served on the same terms^rne city was slow to act. Negotiations drew out; the sit-ins came and went; byx April, i the first 'arrests for "trespass'toccurred. Woolworth's local manager, no racist, felt that his store had been "singled out"; he would integrate if other downtown res- ta feared loss of white customers! could be equitably distributed.! Woolworth's had no national pol-f icy; it adhered to "local custom." ^P . Lonely action (Finally, neither the City Coun-i cil (although it had been inte-| m grated since 1951) nor the! ChambeT^>fCommerce viewed | the sit-ins, as they would today, as a clearly focused issue of I wide implications. It was, in fact, the lonely initiative of | Councilman Ed Zane, a plain- spoken Tennessean and a vice president of the mammoth Burlington Industries textile firm, that led to the appointment of a | negotiating committee. Other- wise the sit-in s might have I wound down as vacation approached or exploded into riot. ' Violence was a constant possi- b i 1 i t y. Young white toughs I (county boys, the city folk said) crowded to the stores to razz the demonstrators, occupying | lunch counter stools in a "counter sit-in." In neighboring Rich- |