\Greensboro Blacks Supported Sit-ins]
This week Greensboro will honor four
men whose names may be unfamiliar but
whose accomplishments probably will be
remembered long after the records set by
more famous natives of the city have faded from the books.
The four are Ezell Blair Jr., Franklin
McCain, Joseph McNeil and David Richmond — four N.C. A&T State University
students who sparked a social revolution
20 years ago when they demanded service
at a whites-only lunch counter of the F.W.
Woolworth store on South Elm Street.
The four will be guests Friday at ceremonies marking the 20th anniversary of
their first sit-in on Feb. 1,1960. Their appearance and the unveiling later that day
of a historical marker are part of a week-
long program recognizing the significance
of the Greensboro sit-ins to the civil rights
revolution that swept the country in the
1960s.
Their protest sparked the student phase
of this uprising. Or, as one participant
was to say later, "That dime store ...
was the birthplace of a whirlwind."
Within two months, the sit-in movement spread to 54 cities in nine rigidly
segregated Southern states. Within a year,
more than 100 cities had engaged in at
least some desegregation of public facilities in response to student-led demonstrations.
The four were not the first to try non-
| violent protests or even lunch counter sit-
I ins, scholars and participants agree. Blair
(now known as Jibreel Khazan), for instance, was inspired by a television docu-
I mentary on Mahatma Gandhi, whose
I passive-resistance movement brought In-
| dia freedom from Great Britain.
But scholars also agree the four were
responsible primarily for starting the
loom that wove hundreds of competing
civil rights threads into a broad-based so-
I cial fabric.
Scholars and participants in the sit-ins
interviewed during the past several weeks
agree on one other point — no single reason explains the nationwide explosion of
sentiment and action that the Greensboro
I protest sparked. ^^^^^^^^^
Instead, they point to various factors.
Martin Luther King Jr.'s Montgomery bus
boycott of 1955 set an example of the
power of non-violence. The national liberation movements in Africa and the emergence of black leaders on the world stage
stirred American blacks emotionally and
intellectually. Some blacks already had
tasted equality during their service in the
armed forces. They brought that experience home and shared it. The awakening
of the media — especially television —
spread the sit-in message with previously
unused speed and power outside the traditional information conduits that were
influenced by Southern power centers.
While national and even global conditions fanned the blaze, Greensboro was
the tinderbox. The Greensboro sit-ins
were, in turn, the result of numerous earlier attempts to desegregate local public
facilities.
"The first and most important theme to
stand out from the Greensboro demonstrations is the extent to which they represented a continuation of protest within
black Greensboro," says William Chafe, a
Duke history professor and author, in his
recently published book Civilities and
Civil Rights. "The sit-in demonstration
represented a dramatic extension of, rather than departure from, traditional black
activism in Greensboro."
oldest and most prestigious organizations in the black community, endorsed
the action. Black morticians, ministers
and business people all pledged bail support in event of arrests. Black ministers,
some of whom were reluctant to support
the protest at first, eventually made
their pulpits vehicles for dispensing information about the sit-ins and a later
boycott.
But it was the nationwide news coverage that gave the sit-ins their historical
significance.
Black students throughout the South
saw in newspapers and on television
was happening in Greensboro and
inspired to try the same tactics in
communities.
"Suddenly, for the first time, segregation came out of the closet," recalled
Fred Friendly, former president of CBS
News and now an executive with the
Ford Foundation. "The conscience of |
the whole nation was touched."
Friendly said advances in television
technology allowed" the networks previously unheard of latitude during the
1960 protests. Cameras in the lunch-
room, he said, forced Americans into
"an intimate confrontation" with a
problem they previously had ignored.
"The excuse that they didn't know
what segregation was like went out the
window. It was like a sign at a railroad
crossing saying: 'Stop, Look and Listen.' "
The civil rights movement of the '60s
without television is as unimaginable,
Friendly said, as World War II without
radio. "You couldn't have had Martin
Luther King without television."
Blacks, he said, were not the only
group to stop and pay attention. Northern big city editors were determining
the news agenda for the nation and bypassing the Southern establishment,
Friendly said. "I remember all the criticism. They were saying, 'Why don't you
stay out? You're meddling.' And affiliates were angrier than anyone because
they had to live with the people."
John Lewis, a field organizer for the
Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee during the 1960s, said television
played a "decisive" role in the transformation of a local protest into a national
movement.
"We saw people sitting in the Caroli-
nas on television every night," said Lewis, now a candidate for Andrew Young's
old congressional seat in Atlanta. "It
gave us a sense of kinship, a bond. We I
said, 'If they can do it in Montgomery
and Greensboro, we can do it in some
of these smaller cities.' "
The sit-ins also came at a time when
blacks were psychologically ready for action. Groups of blacks, "influenced by
the winds of change blowing in Africa"
and by Martin Luther King, had been
preparing for direct action around the
country^ieexplained^^^^^^^^^—
Blacks watched the movements for I
self-government in West Africa and ap-1
plauded the leaders of Nigeria and the |
Gold Coast, who were moving n
j that goal, wrote John Hope Franklin in I
From Slavery to Freedom, A History I
of Negro Americans.
"When Africans south of the Sahara I
began to win their independence, they I
I could hardly have been more delighted I
than Negro Americans," he said. Blacks I
in this country "were not unaware of the I
I effect that the emerging black nations I
| might have upon their own status."
Stimulus for action also came from I
I black military veterans, Lewis noted. [
Many of those involved in the protests, I
he said, had relatives who served in I
World War II and Korea and had en- \
joyed at least some form of equality. '
These veterans "had tasted strange ex-
I perience which fitted ill with their estab- I
I lished role in Dixie," wrote W.J. Cash
I in Mind of the South. "These blacks
I came home now with a bolder lift to
I their heads, a firmer more rolling step,
I and a new light in their eyes."
Lewis said the military service a
I played a role in the attitudes of sit-in I
I participants. Veterans, who returned to
I the South, "stood up and said: 'We went I
I over and served. We're not going to let I
business be business as usual. We're |
going to fight.' "
Finally, said Lewis, there was Martin I
Luther King Jr. "He had a huge, a tremendous influence," Lewis said. "He ]
prepared the ground. He gave us the impetus to say, 'No.' "
Lewis said King convinced blacks that I
non-violence was "serious and respectable, not just another fad." He, combined
with the traditional influence of the I
church, taught blacks that non-violence I
"is not passive. That presenting your I
body as a witness is active." King's F
Montgomery bus boycott instilled pride,
Lewis said. "To see 50,000 people, most- I
ly poor, not hit back, to see people fight I
back with a sense of dignity was a tre- |
mendous impetus."
