3
it-in movement:
More than a cup of coffee
4The students might be thrusting at lunch
counters but their thinking and emotions
swept far beyond to the whole system of segregation and everything it implied.'
ERIC F. GOLDMAN
(Eric F. Goldman is Rollins Professor of
History at Princeton University and is the
author of The Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson,
among other books. Professor Goldman is
currently writing a book on the sit-in move-
The black lunch counter sit-ins which began
in Greensboro and swept the South provide so
rich and dramatic a human story that their basic meaning for American history is often overlooked. While they went on, it was obvious that
these demonstrations were a continuation of a
long struggle of southern blacks against segregation which had already reached one climax
in Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1956 victorious bus
boycott in Montgomery. Yet from the perspective of two decades, it is equally clear that if
the, lunch counter sit-ins of 1960 were more of
'the same, they also had their quite special
significance.
The typical participant in the Montgomery
demonstrations was an adult black often
marked by poverty, lack of education, and
years of severely limited expectations. The
characteristic participants in the southern
lunch counter sit-ins — or at least as typical
as any others — were the four A&T freshmen
who started the movement. Ezell A. Blair Jr^
(now Jibreel Kahzan), Franklin E. McCain, Joseph A. McNeil, and David L. Richmond. The
four were not only young, with the usual buoyancy of being 18: None had been ground down
by abject poverty.
Khazan was the son of two school teachers.
The heads of the^other three homes were a carpenter, a redcap and jack-of-all-trades, and a
water meter repairman. If all the mothers had
to do domestic or similar work at some time to
make ends met, the families were reasonably
comfortable and they were stable. "We were
not the spare ribs set," McNeil put it, "but we
were the hamburger set." The hamburger set
was managing to send its children to college,
and from there the youth assumed that they
were to be part of what Khazan called the
"aspiring middle classes."
It is a commonplace of history that vigorous
efforts for social change are not usually undertaken by hopeless down-and-outers. They are
the work of those on the rise, determined to
win recognition for where they have arrived
and to ascend still more. For generations
southern blacks had put up with the indignities
of segregation, feeling helpless. Franklin McCain has spoken of the close friendship of the
four A&T freshmen and how it came about
not only because we just liked each other but
because there was a certain chemistry,
ing of feelings churning inside of ui
churning inside was the result of a psychology!
sharply different from that of older generations j
of blacks. Here they were college men, by educational standards superior to most whites, but]
forced into the same old humiliations. "We had
entered the mainstream," McCain says in his
emphatic way, "but whites would not face it.
We were walking time bombs."
Out of this mood, the four freshmen and the
thousands they led to the southern lunch counters not only continued the previous attacks on
specific forms of segregation but raised them
to a greatly heightened level of scope, intensity
and effectiveness. During the Easter weekend
of 1960, sit-in leaders from eight southern
states gathered at the black Shaw University in
!
Raleigh. The meeting was one long burst of enthusiasm but the loudest roar came when a
speaker declared, "This is all about a good deal
more than a cup of coffee." They dared to believe, as no previous generation of blacks had
really hoped, that it could be ended and ended
now.
The four A&T freshmen had sat down at the
Woolworth's without organizational backing of
any kind. The whole movement went on shaking away from too close an association with adult blacks — even the 31-year-old King, Jr. —
taking their help but holding them at arm's
length, precisely because the students feared
that older people sooner or later would rely on
cautious gradualism. Most of the college demonstrators may have doggedly practiced nonviolence; for many, it did not express their
feelings. They were saying, It's just a tactic,
and they liked to repeat some unknown member of their ranks who had remarked, "When
the other side has the power structure, you're
non-violent."
The sit-ins were drawing into civil rights activities, and then sending into the national life,
a type of black with a broadened definition of
the racial cause and an enduring restiveness'
putting it to work. At the "Shaw University co
ference alone, the delegates included the young
Julian Bond, Stokely Carmichael, Floyd McKis-
sick, Marion Barry Jr., the present mayor of
Washington, and John Lewis, deputy director
of the Carter administration's ACTION, not to
speak of many others who over the years have
carried forward similar attitudes in less prominent careers.
At first Ralph McGill, the thoughful editor
of the Atlanta Constitution, had doubted
whether the sit-ins would amount to much.
Having watched them develop, he sharply re-1
versed himself and provided the definitive!
comment: "In their own way the sit-ins, with I
their sweep of purpose, their impatience and I
audacity, were fully as important as Martin Lu-1
ther King in changing the nature and tempo of I
the entire black revolution^
IQREENSB0R0 DAILY NEWS
G4 SUNDAY, JANUARY 27, 1980
Goldman Article
Deals only with the four
students' point of view - not
the sordid nitty-gritty.
Harris gave Goldman a half-hour
interview. He asked mostly
about Harris' background.
Have inquired about his book
but received no reply.
