William D. Snider is retired editor of
the Greensboro News & Record.
Woolworth's
reconsidered
after 30 years
As the 30th anniversary of
Greensboro's civil rights sit-ins
approaches, I've been re-reading Duke
Professor William H. Chafe's excellent
book about them called Civilities and
Civil Rights.
How long ago it all seems! Greensboro
News & Record
photographer Jack
Moebes' photograph
of four courageous
A&T students sitting
defiantly, but
certainly fearfully, at
Woolworth's lunch
counter on Feb. 1,
1960 has the aura of
another century. It's
hard to remember
how casually and
bmaer quietly that civil
rights revolution — somebody called it
"Woolworth's Tea Party" — began.
The students had planned it carefully.
They shopped at other notions counters in
the five-and-dime store on South Elm
Street, then asked for a cup of coffee at
the food counter. In a flash they
dramatized apartheid's double standard
so vividly that it could no longer be
ignored. Their simple request to be
treated fairly jolted the conscience of the
community. It became a shot fired at
injustice that was heard around the
world.
Woolworth's revisited three decades
later inspires several thoughts for one
who was on the scene at the time and
wrote about those happenings in this
The first thought is how splendidly the
young participants conducted themselves.
Like Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr.,
they honored the value of non-violent
William D. Snider
resistance, resolved to stand up (or really
sit down) for their beliefs — but with
dignity and without disruption.
When the startled opposition showed
signs of heeding their plea, they
thoughtfully allowed time for debate and
discussion. When stalemate prevailed, as
it often did, they quietly reapplied
pressure. Ultimately, thousands of
students marched through the downtown
streets of Greensboro.
In retrospect who would have believed
that getting a cup of coffee at a downtown
lunch counter could have engendered
such turmoil. But it did; and the demands
of the oppressed were heard. Their
simple act overcame the flawed law which
decreed that customers could be served
at nine counters but turned away at the
tenth. They applied economic pressure,
but it was undergirded by an
unmistakable moral message. On the
fairness issue they were not to be denied.
The second thought is that
Greensboro's "progressive mystique," as
Chafe described it, both encouraged and
obstructed the course of justice. The
city's five colleges, its pluralistic
populace, its efforts to remain "open to
new ideas" and influenced by a "sense of
enlightenment and tolerance" encouraged
the A&T students to feel they might be
successful. It guaranteed that they would
not be seized by police, and shuffled off to
jail like some Iron Curtain victims.
Greensboro had a certain ambience of
civility, and it was not a bad quality for
any age.
But the "civilities" of many
well-meaning white leaders, as Chafe
insists, served both as a tool of social
concern and an excuse for foot-dragging.
Greensboro began desegregation more
quickly than most communities but
lagged longer in expanding the effort. My
own newspaper, while pushing for change
and proclaiming that a moral issue was
involved, was disturbed, perhaps overly,
by threats of violence in the streets and
"outside" conspirators. We sought to
move the unmovable segregationists but
assumed that change would evolve when
reason was applied to push it along.
Perhaps we were overly optimistic.
Chafe believes that too much "civility"
prolonged injustice. At times eggs, and
heads, needed to be cracked. In school
desegregation North Carolina's Pearsall
Plan (allowing local communities to move
at their own pace but offering a "safety
valve" to those who didn't want to move
at all) did delay school desegregation
even as it averted violence and
confrontation. Greensboro's white
leadership did, in retrospect, over-value
its own good intentions and procrastinate
when confronted by rank injustice.
The lessons of Woolworth's Tea Party,
I think are that good faith and trust
inspire good faith and trust. Civility — or
emphasis on the civilizing qualities of
behavior — does serve a purpose. It
establishes a climate in which injustices
can be examined and encourages the
oppressed to air their grievances. That is
what happened on Feb. 1,1960. It has
been happening lately on a larger, and
somewhat different scale in the
revolutions now sweeping Eastern
Europe. Those four A&T students who
decided to leave their campus sanctuary
in a small Southern city and strike a blow
for freedom deserve our thanks.
At the same time, "civility" should
never be used by those who have no
intention of confronting change to hang
on to their old prejudices. There were
individuals of that stripe in Greensboro 30
years ago just as there are some in our
community today.
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