Moving Forward- The Greensboro Sit-Ins
By Matthew Reynolds
The first day of February marks the forty-sixth anniversary of an event that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. described as the “shot heard ‘round the world”. An event that began as a simple act of non-violent protest by four North Carolina A&T freshmen soon snowballed into a series of protests that sent shockwaves through the American South and forever changed the face of the American Civil Rights Movement. It was on this day in 1960 that Ezell Blair Jr. (Jibreel Khazan), Franklin McCain, Joe McNeill, and David Richmond sat at the segregated lunch-counter at Woolworth’s, ordered coffee, and were refused service due to the color of their skin. The four youths would not give up their seats, refusing to bow before the racist policies of the store. They returned the next day, joined by two more students and were refused again. By that afternoon they numbered two dozen, four days later it was nearly 3,000, and within two months this same form of protest had spread to fifty-four cities in nine states. Within six months those same four students were finally served at that same counter. Sit-ins continued to be an effective tool for the American Civil Rights Movement, helping to spur the integration of public facilities throughout the South. These events are so important to American history that the Woolworth lunch counter now sits in the Smithsonian Institution. This is one of the many compelling stories of the Civil Rights movement in
North Carolinathat can be found in Joyner Library’s Verona Joyner Langford North Carolina Collection.
Frye Galliard’s The GreensboroFour- Civil Rights Pioneers, A Profile (2001) provides a succinct version of the events of February 1960. The work is an expanded version of an article Galliard authored for the Charlottealternative magazine Creative Loafing and contains a wealth of information gleaned from interviews with the Greensboro Four.
A more in-depth account of the Sit-Ins can be found in the Miles Wolff classic Lunch at the 5 & 10 (1990). Wolff’s work paints a vivid picture of the principal players in the Sit-Ins and the social climate in which the protests took place. This expanded edition of the work, originally published in 1970, is widely used in the classroom as an ideal resource for young people studying the American Civil Rights Movement.
For those looking for a multimedia experience, the Greensboro News and Record maintains a well produced website focusing on the Sit-Ins. In addition to a detailed Civil Rights timeline, the site includes audio interviews with three of the Greensboro Four and comments from other figures involved, including Curly Harris, who was manager of the Woolworths at the time of the protests, and from writer Jo Spivey, who covered the events for the Greensboro Record. The site also includes numerous images and several newspaper articles covering the protests as they unfolded. The site can be found at http://www.sitins.com.
Area residents, as well as members of the ECU community are welcome to use the North Carolina Collection, located on the third floor of the Joyner Library. For more information, call 252-328-6601 or visit our website at www.ecu.edu/cs-lib/ncc/index.cfm.
Matthew Reynolds is a librarian in the VeronaJoyner Langford North CarolinaCollection.
