GREENSBORO DAILY NEWS
lished July 18, 1909
W. SCOn TRUNDLE President
RICHARD L. HENDRICKS .. Vice President
RICHARD F. SPEARS Advertising Director
TERRY E. GANDY Circulation Director
WALTER RUGABER Executive Editor
WILLIAM D. SNIDER Editor
IRWIN SMALLWOOD Managing Editor
JOHN R. ALEXANDER Associate Editor
PAGE 4
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 1980
SECTION A
20 years ago
It is often said today that individuals can
no longer have a direct bearing on the
warp and woof of history. But this attitude
is defeatist, and it is wrong. Four men
who proved it wrong in Greensboro 20
years ago are in town today to remind us
of what the force of an idea and the courage of a conviction can achieve.
Twenty years. That really isn't so long
ago. But in terms of this society's treatment of blacks, especially in the South, it
is an eternity. It is hard to believe now
how absurd and pervasive and degrading
the various instruments of segregation
were. That blacks could not eat lunch at
the same counter with whites, use the
same restrooms, sleep in the same motels,
attend the same schools, go to the same
theaters, even drink out of the same water
fountains, may seem incredible today. But
-these were the indignities and inequalities,
large and small, imposed by law and custom on a large segment of Greensboro's
citizens.
By Feb. 1, 1960, this pernicious house of
cards was ready to crumble across the
South. But it took four A&T students,
three of them Greensboro natives and
graduates of Dudley High School, to reach
out and give that house a push. Soon these
four — Ezell Blair Jr., Joseph McNeil,
David Richmond and Franklin McCain — ,
were joined by others. In just two months
the sit-in movement spread to 54 cities in
nine states. As one participant later noted,
;"that dime store., was the birthplace of
^l whirlwind."
The sit-ins in Greensboro were notable
in several respects. They were a locally-inspired movement. They were born on the
campuses of A&T and Bennett College and
eventually nurtured by nearly a
of the black community. The participants
were disciplined in their planning, firm in
their views and non-violent and dignified
in their behavior.
Though we celebrate the anniversary of
the first Greensboro sit-in today, it was
not an isolated event. The sit-ins themselves represented the culmination of frustrations that had been building for years.
This was especially true after black expectations had been falsely lifted by the
promise of the U.S. Supreme Court's
Brown v. Topeka Board of Education
decision in 1954.
Even after the sit-ins, it took many
more years in Greensboro and other cities
for real desegregation to be achieved. The
second round of Greensboro protests in
1963 was bigger and more tense than the
first. But they, too, won real progress.
That forward movement, of course, is
not finished. True, the main legal and constitutional framework has been laid.
Blacks are now visible in elective and appointive posts in government and the private sector.
But as former Congressman and UN
Ambassador Andrew Young told a Chapel
Hill audience earlier this week, economic
progress for blacks has been especially
slow. Though blacks are recognized as
equal citizens, they are not always treated
as such in terms of access to housing, jobs
and education.
These problems are less susceptible to
frontal attack than a blatantly segregated
lunch counter. But with the persistence
and pluck of 20 years ago, they too can be
overcome.
