Protesters Reflect on Success of Student Sit-ins

Diverse Issues in Higher Education
by Martha Waggoner, Associated Press Writer , February 1, 2010

GREENSBORO N.C. – The four college freshmen walked quietly into a Greensboro dime store on a breezy Monday afternoon, bought a few items, then sat down at the "Whites only" lunch counter and sparked a wave of civil rights protest that changed America.
Violating a social custom as rigid as law, Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, Ezell Blair Jr. and David Richmond sat near an older White woman on the silver-backed stools at the F.W. Woolworth. The Black students had no need to talk; theirs was no spontaneous act. Their actions on Feb. 1, 1960, were meticulously planned, down to buying a few school supplies and toiletries and keeping their receipts as proof that the lunch counter was the only part of the store where racial segregation still ruled.
“The best feeling of my life,” McCain said, was “sitting on that dumb stool.”
“I felt so relieved,” he added. “I felt so at peace and so self-accepted at that very moment. Nothing has ever happened to me since then that topped that good feeling of being clean and fully accepted and feeling proud of me.”
They weren't afraid, even though they had no way of knowing how the sit-ins would end. What they did know was this: They were tired, they were angry and they were ready to change the world.

Full Story: http://diverseeducation.com/article/13494/protesters-reflect-on-success-of-1960s-student-sit-ins.html

See also: "The Counter Revolution: New York Times Op-Ed" and Picture: New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/01/opinion/01greensboro.html?th&emc=th

Civil Rights Pioneer: Post-Racial World Doesn’t Exist

AFL-CIO Now Blog
by James Parks, Jan 18, 2010

The Martin Luther King Jr. holiday is a good time to assess that post-racial world we’re supposed to be living in now. So, how’s it working out?
Not very well, according to Franklin McCain. He’s one of the four trailblazing students whose sit-in 50 years ago at a lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C., ignited a nationwide effort that resulted in passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Says McCain:
I don’t know where I was when racism disappeared from these United States of ours. This new right and the Tea Partiers have taken the position that anybody who talks about racial discrimination or affirmative action is a whiner or a civil rights pimp. We have to get off the sidelines and attack [that kind of language]….They are taking parts of our gains and using it against us. And it’s ridiculous.

McCain, 67, and three of his fellow students at North Carolina Agricultural & Technical College sat down at the whites-only lunch counter in the Woolworth’s in downtown Greensboro on Feb. 1, 1960, and refused to leave until they were served. Their bold action inspired protests in more than 50 cities across the South against segregated public facilities.

Picture: From left, David Richmond, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair and Joseph McNeil, the four North Carolina A&T students who staged the 1960 sit-in, are shown leaving Woolworth’s.

Full Story: http://blog.aflcio.org/2010/01/18/civil-rights-pioneer-post-racial-world-doesnt-exist/