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

Scholar Renders Deft History of Civil Rights Era

Diverse Issues in Higher Education
by Kendal Weaver, Associated Press Writer , December 21, 2009

Even after nearly 50 years, the names bear repeating: Franklin McCain, David Richmond, Ezell Blair and Joseph McNeil.
They were freshmen at North Carolina A&T State University on Feb. 1, 1960, when they took their seats at the Whites-only lunch counter at Woolworth's in downtown Greensboro. Four young Blacks tired of segregation laws, they were refused service and asked to leave. But they remained until the counter closed, and when they walked back to their dorm exhilarated, they had set in motion an act of civil disobedience - the sit-in - that took the civil rights movement by storm.
The next day, 25 sit-in protesters showed up. Then 63 filled all but two seats at Woolworth's. The protest spilled over to the nearby Kress department store, and as word spread across North Carolina and across the South, so did the sit-in: By mid-April, more than 50,000 protesters - ordinary Americans, most of them young - had attacked Jim Crow at the counter.

Full Story: http://diverseeducation.com/article/13282/scholar-renders-deft-history-of-civil-rights-era.html

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