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Greensboro sit-ins were just the beginning
\Jfi
By DAVID R. GOLDFIELD
On a warm spring afternoon in downtown Jackson, Miss., Anne Moody, a black
college student, and three of her classmates sat down at a Woolworth's lunch
Counter and waited for service. A small
group of whites promptly terminated the
demonstration by yanking Moody off her
stool, dragging her
some 30 feet by the
hair, and dousing her
and the other participants with ketchup,
mustard and sugar
pies.
By this time — 1962
— the sit-ins, swim-ins,
stand-ins and versions
thereof, had attained an
almost-ritualistic quality: A group of well- Goldtield
dressed, polite, non-resisting blacks, often
abetted by a sprinkling of whites, entered
the targeted establishment and requested
service. From then on, however, the script
varied. The reactions could be violent, as in
Jackson or St. Augustine; confined to
heckling, as in Greensboro; or even grudging cooperation, as in Atlanta, where Dick
Rich wept as Martin Luther King Jr. sat
down to lunch in Rich's Magnolia Room,
but ordered that King and his party be
served.
The differing scenarios across the South
underscored one of the major consequences
of the sit-in movement which originated in
Greensboro three years earlier: It de-
The writer is the Robert Lee Bailey Professor of History at UNC-Charlotte. This
is the third in a series of columns commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Greensboro lunch counter sit-ins this month.
The Guest Column
stroyed the Solid South. No longer could
the white portion of the region speak with
a more or less uniform voice on the race
issue. The crazy-quilt responses to black
pressure owed to at least three factors.
First, those cities that had, over the years,
developed some form of interracial dialogue generally experienced less resistance
to integration. These communities were
also more likely to possess an active, articulate and fairly affluent black middle class,
as in Greensboro, Durham, Charlotte and
Atlanta.
Finally, economic development tended to
have a moderating influence on race relations. Cities such as Atlanta, Dallas,
Greensboro and Charlotte that were experiencing economic and demographic growth
were more likely to moderate or abandon
biracial customs if their maintenance led to
disturbance and consequent bad publicity.
In Charlotte, local leaders steered through
the peaceful integration of businesses in
1962 because "This was too good a town to
have it ruined." The Chamber of Commerce announced that Eastern Airlines
had just chosen the city as the site for a
new $6 million computer facility and that
the city's handling of race relations was a
prime factor in the decision.
The sit-ins helped to accelerate racial
progress in areas besides public accommodations, where decades-old activity had
scarcely altered the biracial structure. The
foundering school integration movement
revived, culminating in Judge James McMillan's Swann v. Mecklenburg County
decision (1969) which replaced the dilatory
freedom-of-choice option with busing to
achieve racial balance.
The case and its subsequent region-wide
application stripped away the innovative
circumspection of moderate civic leadership in cities such as Greensboro and Atlanta. The school system in the latter city
was more segregated in 1967 than it was at
the time of the historic Brown decision in
1954. Where violence and obstreperous official behavior had surfaced, such as in
Jackson, Birmingham and New Orleans,
school desegration occurred more swifty
and thoroughly than'in those locales where
subtlety and tokenism prevailed.
Perhaps the most far-reaching result of
the confrontational tactics inspired by the
sit-ins occurred with the passage of the
1965 Voting Rights Act. The act helped to
expand black voter registration by tenfold
and more in some of the Deep South states.
But here again, the geography of progress
split the South in new ways. As Southern
blacks became urban dwellers, their political power was reflected in electoral victories in Richmond, Atlanta, Charlotte, New
Orleans and that erstwhile bastion of segregation, Birmingham. In the small towns
and rural areas, however, economic pressure, gerrymandering, official obfuseation
and even intimidation still limit black political effectiveness, especially in the Deep
South.
So the answer to "How far have we
come?" since Greensboro, 1960, depends
upon where you ask that question — Atlanta or a black belt town — and of whom — a
black mayor or an unemployed teenager.
But the civil-rights movement was only a
beginning and, after all, as Vanderbilt
theologian James Sellars noted, "no struggle for justice is ever finally won. Every
advance teaches us how we must yet do
still more to be even fairer " And, amid
this realization, it is important to maintain
the perspective of what those four young
men actually accomplished 25 years ago
quite apart from the quantitative renderings of voting lists, management positions
and integrated lunches.
The sit-ins accomplished three intangible, yet significant things for black .and
white Southerners. As the first concerted
attempt at direct action, the sit-ins made
the black man visible. Prior to the demonstrations, blacks were' largely figments of
white conceptions. By breaking from his
"place," the black broke the perception.
And "the day he stopped being a good old
Negro," a writer in Ebony declared ih
1961, "was the day he became a man."
But there was something in it for the
white man as well. The crumbling of segregation presaged the end of the sin of race
pride, a notion that obscured the humanity
and reality of both black and white. If, as
Paul Tillich has argued, "sin is separation,"
then the sit-ins were truly redemptive.
Finally, the sit-ins did not destroy the
South, so much as uplift the region. The
demonstrators appealed to the region's
sense of place — this was their land and
their roots, too, and they would suffer and
perhaps die to redeem their homeland
much as whites had done a century earlier.
The sit-ins were grounded in the regional
religious faith: the importance of love, the
possibilities of redemption and the promise
of justice. And the demonstrations reflected regional history, for blacks in the South
bore a similar relation to their region as
the region bore to the nation: oppressed,
second-class, ridiculed, poor and defeated.
It was a distinctly Southern story, and its
happy conclusion still rests upon Southerners, all of us.

Page/Item Description

Title	Greensboro sit-ins were just the beginning
Date	1985-02-10
Creator	Goldfield, David R.
Subject headings	Greensboro Sit-ins, Greensboro, N.C., 1960
Topics	Business desegregation and sit-ins, 1960
Place	Greensboro (N.C.)
Description	UNC-Charlotte history professor David R. Goldfield argues in his guest column for the Greensboro News & Record that the sit-in movement, which originated in Greensboro and spread to many other cities throughout the South, led to the destruction of the "Solid South", where white residents of the southern region would be the region's sole decision makers. Goldfield mentions that reaction to sit-in movements ranged from blatantly violent in some cities to grudgingly cooperative in other, and he believes that cities such as Greensboro, Charlotte and Atlanta—which had fairly affluent black middle classes—had already developed some interracial dialog and put up the least resistance to integration. Goldfield largely believes that the answer to the question "How far have we come?" is different depending on where it is asked and who is being asked. Goldfield maintains that the sit-ins accomplished three things for southerners: they "made the black man visible", they served as a redemption for the white race, and they uplifted the South with a distinct story that has a "happy conclusion." 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.
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	3
Folder	Folder 3: Scrapbook 8: Sit In, 25 Year Anniversary, 1985
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	MSS0141.003.003.0943
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
Full text	Greensboro sit-ins were just the beginning \Jfi By DAVID R. GOLDFIELD On a warm spring afternoon in downtown Jackson, Miss., Anne Moody, a black college student, and three of her classmates sat down at a Woolworth's lunch Counter and waited for service. A small group of whites promptly terminated the demonstration by yanking Moody off her stool, dragging her some 30 feet by the hair, and dousing her and the other participants with ketchup, mustard and sugar pies. By this time — 1962 — the sit-ins, swim-ins, stand-ins and versions thereof, had attained an almost-ritualistic quality: A group of well- Goldtield dressed, polite, non-resisting blacks, often abetted by a sprinkling of whites, entered the targeted establishment and requested service. From then on, however, the script varied. The reactions could be violent, as in Jackson or St. Augustine; confined to heckling, as in Greensboro; or even grudging cooperation, as in Atlanta, where Dick Rich wept as Martin Luther King Jr. sat down to lunch in Rich's Magnolia Room, but ordered that King and his party be served. The differing scenarios across the South underscored one of the major consequences of the sit-in movement which originated in Greensboro three years earlier: It de- The writer is the Robert Lee Bailey Professor of History at UNC-Charlotte. This is the third in a series of columns commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Greensboro lunch counter sit-ins this month. The Guest Column stroyed the Solid South. No longer could the white portion of the region speak with a more or less uniform voice on the race issue. The crazy-quilt responses to black pressure owed to at least three factors. First, those cities that had, over the years, developed some form of interracial dialogue generally experienced less resistance to integration. These communities were also more likely to possess an active, articulate and fairly affluent black middle class, as in Greensboro, Durham, Charlotte and Atlanta. Finally, economic development tended to have a moderating influence on race relations. Cities such as Atlanta, Dallas, Greensboro and Charlotte that were experiencing economic and demographic growth were more likely to moderate or abandon biracial customs if their maintenance led to disturbance and consequent bad publicity. In Charlotte, local leaders steered through the peaceful integration of businesses in 1962 because "This was too good a town to have it ruined." The Chamber of Commerce announced that Eastern Airlines had just chosen the city as the site for a new $6 million computer facility and that the city's handling of race relations was a prime factor in the decision. The sit-ins helped to accelerate racial progress in areas besides public accommodations, where decades-old activity had scarcely altered the biracial structure. The foundering school integration movement revived, culminating in Judge James McMillan's Swann v. Mecklenburg County decision (1969) which replaced the dilatory freedom-of-choice option with busing to achieve racial balance. The case and its subsequent region-wide application stripped away the innovative circumspection of moderate civic leadership in cities such as Greensboro and Atlanta. The school system in the latter city was more segregated in 1967 than it was at the time of the historic Brown decision in 1954. Where violence and obstreperous official behavior had surfaced, such as in Jackson, Birmingham and New Orleans, school desegration occurred more swifty and thoroughly than'in those locales where subtlety and tokenism prevailed. Perhaps the most far-reaching result of the confrontational tactics inspired by the sit-ins occurred with the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The act helped to expand black voter registration by tenfold and more in some of the Deep South states. But here again, the geography of progress split the South in new ways. As Southern blacks became urban dwellers, their political power was reflected in electoral victories in Richmond, Atlanta, Charlotte, New Orleans and that erstwhile bastion of segregation, Birmingham. In the small towns and rural areas, however, economic pressure, gerrymandering, official obfuseation and even intimidation still limit black political effectiveness, especially in the Deep South. So the answer to "How far have we come?" since Greensboro, 1960, depends upon where you ask that question — Atlanta or a black belt town — and of whom — a black mayor or an unemployed teenager. But the civil-rights movement was only a beginning and, after all, as Vanderbilt theologian James Sellars noted, "no struggle for justice is ever finally won. Every advance teaches us how we must yet do still more to be even fairer " And, amid this realization, it is important to maintain the perspective of what those four young men actually accomplished 25 years ago quite apart from the quantitative renderings of voting lists, management positions and integrated lunches. The sit-ins accomplished three intangible, yet significant things for black .and white Southerners. As the first concerted attempt at direct action, the sit-ins made the black man visible. Prior to the demonstrations, blacks were' largely figments of white conceptions. By breaking from his "place" the black broke the perception. And "the day he stopped being a good old Negro" a writer in Ebony declared ih 1961, "was the day he became a man." But there was something in it for the white man as well. The crumbling of segregation presaged the end of the sin of race pride, a notion that obscured the humanity and reality of both black and white. If, as Paul Tillich has argued, "sin is separation" then the sit-ins were truly redemptive. Finally, the sit-ins did not destroy the South, so much as uplift the region. The demonstrators appealed to the region's sense of place — this was their land and their roots, too, and they would suffer and perhaps die to redeem their homeland much as whites had done a century earlier. The sit-ins were grounded in the regional religious faith: the importance of love, the possibilities of redemption and the promise of justice. And the demonstrations reflected regional history, for blacks in the South bore a similar relation to their region as the region bore to the nation: oppressed, second-class, ridiculed, poor and defeated. It was a distinctly Southern story, and its happy conclusion still rests upon Southerners, all of us.
OCLC number	884368267

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