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|Greensboro: [WforeThe Movement Began| r ^ Woolworth's Lunch Counter, 1960 Miles Wolff Jr. it was never obvious why! Greensboro, of all the smaller! £ies M the mid-South, should! have given birth to the lunch-1 counter sit-ins of February I960.1 The town has its special quah-1 ties, of course - among them a ■ Woolworth's lunch counter was I set then, as it is today, in art decaying downtown of unprepos-u se sing character-so much sol t Louis Mumford, according I to a local tale, once called us "the parking-lot city," v %11 e . years earlier Will Rogers had been reminded by Greensboro s 1 Ee skyscraper of the first^th in a baby's gaping mouth.[*&) Conservative . V^ ■ North Carolina Agricultural I and Technical College, the all- 1 Negro institution that supplied le sit-inners (four freshmen, 1 three of them Greensboro toys) had been a conservative schoo1, I firmly set in the Southern pat- Item of educational paternalism I land overwhelmingly North Care- I llinian in flavor: no headquarters; ■ of the "outside agitators" —- | whom many a southerner tends 3 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." 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-UE, rather to'examine their impact} on the city and o- region. According to M I Wolff -it was Ralph Johns, local haberdasher and pol.tica I ■■character" (he once tried out I ■ in Hollywood for the role ofl ■ Rudolph Valentino) who prodded I I the four A&T freshmen to takeP I their seats politely at Wool-| I worth's all-white lunch counter. I Whoever inspired them, thel I four were pioneers with a fu-1 Iture. They began "the most| ■ massive demonstration ■history of the South" - a move-1 ■ ment that spred to 68 cities in 13 I ■ states by summer._ "The four boys (Wolff writes', , sat down at the Woolworth I counter at a time when the world situation was relatively stable, when there was little news to distract readers ... in I a moderate Southern city, conscious of its image and unwilling to have the students arrested or inflict v i o 1 e n c e on them ... More important than the time or place was the form. Here was a protest against one of the most is forms of discrimination, •es that invited Negroes to I shop." Although measurable community sentiment seemed to agree with them that it was unjust to ask Negroes to stand at a count- f where whites could sit, in a Itore where they were otheggse ■ served on the same termsTTne ■city was slow to act. Negotiations drew out; the sit-ins came land went; by; April,i the first ^arrests for "trespass"occurred.l Woolworth's local manager, no| racist, felt that his store had! sen "singled out"; he would! itegrate if other ctowntownresj (taunrteurs would so that thel feared loss of white customers! could be equitably distributed.! Woolworth's had no national pol-l icy; it adhered to "local cus-| . Lonely action J Finally, neither the City Coun-B ■ cil (although it had been inte-B Berated since 1951) nor the! ■Chamber of Commerce viewed! lit-ins, as they would today, I _„., a clearly focused issue of | Bwide implications. It was, ■fact, the lonely initiative of 1 Councilman Ed Zane a plam- ■ spoken Tennessean and a vice ■ president of the mammoth Bur- ■lington Industries textile firm, ■ that led to the appointment of a ■ negotiating committee. Other- ■wise the sit-ins might have ■ wound down as vacation ap- ■proached or exploded into not. X ■i Violence was a constant possi-1 Jb i 1 i t y Young white toughs I ■ (county boys, the city folk said) I ■crowded to the stores to razz I ■the demonstrators, occupying I ■lunch counter stools in a "count- I in." In neighboringjtich-j
Object Description
Title | Greensboro: Where The Movement Began |
Date | 1970-06 |
Date approximate? | yes |
Creator | Yoder, Edwin M., Jr. |
Subject headings | Greensboro Sit-ins, Greensboro, N.C., 1960 |
Topics | Business desegregation and sit-ins, 1960 |
Place | Greensboro (N.C.) |
Description |
In this Greensboro Daily News article, Edwin Yoder Jr. reviews Miles Wolff Jr.'s book, Lunch At The Five & 10, about the February 1960 sit-ins at Greensboro's Woolworth store. Yoder begins by discussing the backdrop for the sit-ins, claiming Greensboro had a "decaying downtown" and that North Carolina A&T State University, where the four original protesters were students, was a conservative university "set in the Southern pattern of educational paternalism." In his book, Wolff states that business owner Ralph Johns influenced the four students—David Richmond, Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair Jr. (now Jibreel Khazan)—to sit-in, setting off similar protests throughout the South. He then argues that city councilman Edward Zane's negotiating committee led to the desegregation of the counter. He also discusses the young whites who taunt the demonstrators and orchestrate a counter sit-in. He concludes by claiming that the economic effect of a boycott of downtown stores was what really led to desegregation in Greensboro. Yoder writes that Wolff's book "recaptured those days with a sense of their drama, with deft characterization of the principals and with a sure feeling for the mood." This article was clipped and saved in a scrapbook by Clarence "Curly" Harris, manager of the Greensboro Woolworth store at the time of the 1960 sit-ins. Also included are Harris' comments on the article. Harris argues that money was not the cause for Woolworth's decision to desegregate, that Woolworth did not have anyone arrested, and that Greensboro's downtown was "the dominant area in the city" in 1960. |
Type | text |
Original format | clippings;scrapbooks |
Original dimensions | 9" x 11" |
Original publisher | [Place of publication not identified] : [publisher not identified] |
Language | en |
Contributing institution | Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives, UNCG University Libraries |
Source collection | MSS141 Clarence Lee Harris Papers, circa 1916-1997 |
Series/grouping | 6 Scrapbooks |
Box | 2 |
Folder | Folders 2-3: Scrapbook 2: Sit/In, Feb. 1, 1960, Woolworth, Greensboro, NC, 1963-1980 |
Finding aid link | http://libapps.uncg.edu/archon/index.php?p=collections/controlcard&id=506 |
Rights statement | http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
Additional rights information | IN COPYRIGHT. This item is subject to copyright. Contact the contributing institution for permission to reuse. |
Object ID | MSS01414.002.002.1083 |
Digital publisher | The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, University Libraries, PO Box 26170, Greensboro NC 27402-6170, 336.334.5305 -- http://library.uncg.edu/ |
Sponsor | LSTA grant administered by the North Carolina State Library -- http://statelibrary.ncdcr.gov/ld/grants/lsta.html |
OCLC number | 884368173 |
Page/Item Description
Title | Page 1 |
Full text | |Greensboro: [WforeThe Movement Began| r ^ Woolworth's Lunch Counter, 1960 Miles Wolff Jr. it was never obvious why! Greensboro, of all the smaller! £ies M the mid-South, should! have given birth to the lunch-1 counter sit-ins of February I960.1 The town has its special quah-1 ties, of course - among them a ■ Woolworth's lunch counter was I set then, as it is today, in art decaying downtown of unprepos-u se sing character-so much sol t Louis Mumford, according I to a local tale, once called us "the parking-lot city" v %11 e . years earlier Will Rogers had been reminded by Greensboro s 1 Ee skyscraper of the first^th in a baby's gaping mouth.[*&) Conservative . V^ ■ North Carolina Agricultural I and Technical College, the all- 1 Negro institution that supplied le sit-inners (four freshmen, 1 three of them Greensboro toys) had been a conservative schoo1, I firmly set in the Southern pat- Item of educational paternalism I land overwhelmingly North Care- I llinian in flavor: no headquarters; ■ of the "outside agitators" —- | whom many a southerner tends 3 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." 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-UE, rather to'examine their impact} on the city and o- region. According to M I Wolff -it was Ralph Johns, local haberdasher and pol.tica I ■■character" (he once tried out I ■ in Hollywood for the role ofl ■ Rudolph Valentino) who prodded I I the four A&T freshmen to takeP I their seats politely at Wool-| I worth's all-white lunch counter. I Whoever inspired them, thel I four were pioneers with a fu-1 Iture. They began "the most| ■ massive demonstration ■history of the South" - a move-1 ■ ment that spred to 68 cities in 13 I ■ states by summer._ "The four boys (Wolff writes', , sat down at the Woolworth I counter at a time when the world situation was relatively stable, when there was little news to distract readers ... in I a moderate Southern city, conscious of its image and unwilling to have the students arrested or inflict v i o 1 e n c e on them ... More important than the time or place was the form. Here was a protest against one of the most is forms of discrimination, •es that invited Negroes to I shop." Although measurable community sentiment seemed to agree with them that it was unjust to ask Negroes to stand at a count- f where whites could sit, in a Itore where they were otheggse ■ served on the same termsTTne ■city was slow to act. Negotiations drew out; the sit-ins came land went; by; April,i the first ^arrests for "trespass"occurred.l Woolworth's local manager, no| racist, felt that his store had! sen "singled out"; he would! itegrate if other ctowntownresj (taunrteurs would so that thel feared loss of white customers! could be equitably distributed.! Woolworth's had no national pol-l icy; it adhered to "local cus-| . Lonely action J Finally, neither the City Coun-B ■ cil (although it had been inte-B Berated since 1951) nor the! ■Chamber of Commerce viewed! lit-ins, as they would today, I _„., a clearly focused issue of | Bwide implications. It was, ■fact, the lonely initiative of 1 Councilman Ed Zane a plam- ■ spoken Tennessean and a vice ■ president of the mammoth Bur- ■lington Industries textile firm, ■ that led to the appointment of a ■ negotiating committee. Other- ■wise the sit-ins might have ■ wound down as vacation ap- ■proached or exploded into not. X ■i Violence was a constant possi-1 Jb i 1 i t y Young white toughs I ■ (county boys, the city folk said) I ■crowded to the stores to razz I ■the demonstrators, occupying I ■lunch counter stools in a "count- I in." In neighboringjtich-j |