Television Gave Impetus to Movement

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AO Greensboro Daily News, Sun., Jan. 27,1980
Television Gave Impetus To Movement
right of blacks to use the city-owned
facility.
Ezell Blair Sr., father of one of the
original four protesters and a shop
teacher at Dudley High School, in 1959
led a drive to pressure merchants in a
shopping center near the black community to employ minority sales personnel
in "non-traditional" jobs.
A powerful impetus for the civil rights
movement in Greensboro came in 1958
when Martin Luther King arrived to
preach. The black community, fearful of
economic reprisals, refused to make an
auditorium available for King's speech.
But just as it appeared there would be
no place for King to speak, President
Willa Player of Bennett College offered
a campus chapel. Blacks thronged the
college, filling not only the chapel but
also nearby rooms where the sermon
was piped through loudspeakers.
"King's message — that American racism must be brought to the court of justice and eradicated through active,
loving protest — affirmed a movement
growing within Greensboro itself toward
more and more direct challenge of the
status quo," Chafe wrote. Recalled the
younger Blair, "King's sermon was so
strong I could feel my heart palpitating.
It brought tears to my eyes."
If the events of the '50s set the stage
for an inevitable confrontation, it was an
obscure white clothing store proprietor
who raised the curtain. According to
Miles Wolff Jr., who wrote the book
Lunch at the 5 and 10, Ralph Johns,
whose small Market Street store catered
to blacks, had attempted for several
years to recruit A&T students to sit-in.
A strong opponent of segregation, Johns
suggested the idea to Blair, who, in turn,
helped convince the three others to participate. Johns prepared and coached
them and arranged bail money.
The black community in Greensboro
before the sit-in was, according to scholars, by no means unanimous in its support of challenges to the white
establishment. Some black leaders and
institutions were slow in endorsing the
protest.
But many black leaders, even some of I
those chosen by the white leaders for I
their accomodating racial views, eventu- [
ally rallied in support of the four protes- I
ters and their student allies, especially I
after negotiations to end the sit-in failed, f
Among those whose support may have I
surprised their mentors was Warmath I
Gibbs, president of A&T. He had been I
chosen for his job, according to Chafe, I
because of his deferential manner. Gibbs I
was "not as brilliant as some," but he I
was a "very safe and sound person and I
his views on racial questions are more I
in line with our thinking than many of I
his race," the late Robert Frazier, a |
white Greensboro lawyer and then chairman of the school's board of trustees,
wrote Gov. Luther Hodges in 1956 in I
support of Gibbs' presidential candidacy-
But once the sit-ins started, Gibbs I
stood firm, Chafe said. "Throughout the I
entire period of the sit-ins — despite I
fears that the white state legislature I
would retaliate by slashing the school's I
appropriations — Gibbs and Dean Wil- r
liam Gamble defended the students' I
freedom to express their own political I
off campus."
The original four members of the February 1960 lunch counter sit-in are (left to right): David Richmond, Franklin McCain,
Ezell Blair Jr. (now Jimbaeel Khazan) and Joseph McNeil