Sit-ins and how they changed us

              Greensboro News & Record, Sun., May 15, 1983
The sit-ins
and how they
changed us
The writer is retired editor of the
Greensboro Daily News and The Greensboro
Record.
Would I talk to her about the lunch counter sit-ins of 1960, she asked. I had written
some of the Daily News editorials about
them then, hadn't I? She was in journalism
at Chapel Hill, a student of Jim Shumaker's,
and she had a choice between this subject
and a term paper on advertising.
would. Now she was sitting in my office at the
Daily News, wondering
about how it was then.
"It seems you were not
trying to tell your readers what was right," she
began. "You were telling
them about the need for
discussion, for communi-
£l™;<1*».        cation. Were you afraid
sniaer      there would be vi0ienCe?
Was the situation tense?" ^ f
Well, of course it was. We had already
been through the first phase — the baby
steps of desegregation after the Brown decision. That was full of confrontation. The
Greensboro school board, acting in unison
with the Charlotte and Winston-Salem
school boards, had decided to authorize the
first racial breakthroughs. It was 1957, the
same fall President Eisenhower sent the
troops to Little Rock. There a handful of
black students broke the color line and were
spat upon and harassed.
Here in Greensboro it was the same at Gillespie Park School. Even token desegregation generated deep hostility toward
Greensboro school board members and especially Superintendent Ben Smith. Unordered
deliveries of flowers and coal arrived at his
William D. Snider
door. At a board meeting on Simpson Street
one hot summer evening Klan members
joined the overflow crowd; some gathered
outside the open windows. There were
cross-burnings in the yards of whites who
had supported the token start.
When the four A&T students took up their
vigil a few years later at Woolworth's, they
asked to be served quietly and not, it
seemed then, as something in which they
would persist. Jo Spivey, a gallant Greens>
boro Record reporter, first got wind of their
plans. She reported them promptly, but her
editors at first didn't perceive their importance.  ^^^ ^_
Then they began to light up the sky. Other newspapers flocked to report. What had
begun in Greensboro in March 1960 spread
rapidly across the nation, like a flame across
a dry field. Mostly it- was in the college
towns where black students felt they had a
sanctuary, some protection from economic
and communal reprisal.
Why did it start in Greensboro? Because
the community had five colleges and university campuses and its level of tolerance was
high. That was one reason. Another was set
forth brilliantly by Prof. William Chafe's
penetrating study of the sit-ins. Greensboro's leaders, being for the most part civilized themselves, believed in civility, regardless of their conservatism in civil rights.
Men like the late Mayor David Schenck
found their consciences stung by editorial arguments that went like this: Why should
blacks be encouraged to shop at nine counters in Woolworth's but denied service at the
tenth? It didn't make sense. But private
property owners had other objections, especially those who sold only food and drink.
They argued that a shopkeeper should be allowed to choose his own clientele. And besides, if blacks were served, that would
frighten away white customers. (Of course,
it didn't.) jfc
We editorialists at the Daily News heard
and wrote about all these arguments. We
had our individual fracture points. Some
leaned more toward property rights protection than others. Some found racial injustice
intolerable.
Earlier we had supported Gov. Luther
Hodges' Pearsall Plan. That allowed various
sections of North Carolina to move at their
own pace in school desegregation. It provided a safety valve. It avoided a George Wallace standing at the school house door or
massive resistance which closed some Virginia schools.
Yes, we did want to save the peace and
the schools — along with correcting injustices. We believed, as Gandhi and Martin j
Luther King did, that civil disobedience had  '
its place (even though those who engaged in   \
it must accept the consequences). But we
also knew that finding a way to bring consensus along with justice would be best.
In our editorial offices we differed sometimes on conclusions and tone and tactics.
We thought we were trying to lead the mayor, the councilmen, the shopkeepers, the
executives, the children, the school patrons
and the public to some kind of accommoda-
tion.
It was a matter of trying to do what was
possible. In the long run the gallantry of
those who sat in and the scope of the injus-   -
tices touched the consciences of the kings.
But the falloff in business, the indications
that aroused petitioners simply wouldn't go
away, changed minds too. The doors were 4
thrown open. Soon everyone wondered how ,
they had remained closed so long. Especially
the children and grandchildren: "Grand-
daddy, do you mean black people couldn't go
in a restaurant and get a cup of coffee?"
Yes, that was how it was.
"Could you tell me where Woolworth's is?"
Jim Shumaker's student asked finally as we
finished talking. I told her where it was, just
a block and a half up the street, near the
Jefferson Standard Building. Already there
was an antique ambience about the red and
gold sign across the front — as if the event
that took place inside had transpired many,
many years ago.
And so it had.