6
Sit-ins
I
n Greensboro, North Carolina, the Woolworth’s department store man-
agement allowed black patrons to buy merchandise and to eat at a stand-
up snack bar, but refused them service in the sit-down diner. After a
late-night ‘bull session,’ four black freshmen from North Carolina A & T
College decided in early 1960 to challenge the store’s demeaning and hypo-
critical policy. Joseph McNeil, a studious physics major; David Richmond,
who contemplated a future in the ministry; Air Force ROTC student
Franklin McCain; and Ezell Blair, Jr., son of an industrial arts teacher,
goaded each other to start their own boycott. They had read black protest
literature in high school, been active in NAACP youth groups, attended a
presentation by the Little Rock Nine, and heard Martin Luther King give
a heart-pounding sermon. Their incipient rebelliousness was encouraged
by Ralph Johns, a clothier of Syrian descent who belonged to the NAACP.
Steeling themselves for trouble, these middle-class students agreed that
‘We’ve talked about it long enough. Let’s do something.’
‘All of us were afraid,’ Franklin McCain admitted, of having ‘our heads
split open with a night stick and hauled into prison,’ but ‘we went ahead and
did it’ anyway. At 4.30 p.m. on Monday, 1 February, the neatly dressed
teenagers entered Woolworth’s and bought toothpaste, notebooks, and pen-
cils to show their good intentions. Then they sat quietly on stools at the
formica-topped, L-shaped lunch-counter, waiting to be served. When Ezell
Blair asked politely for coffee, a white waitress scolded the Greensboro stu-
dents, ‘I’m sorry. We don’t serve colored here.’ Most white customers turned
their heads and cursed the ‘nasty, dirty niggers,’ but a couple of old white
women encouraged them with a pat on the back and told them that they
‘should have done it ten years ago.’ The manager, Clarence ‘Curly’ Harris,
rushed over to tell the students that store policy forbade serving blacks.
When the students showed their receipts from the merchandise counter and
stayed on, Harris tried unsuccessfully to have the well-behaved students
arrested. Outside the store, McCain was relieved that he escaped violenceMcCain, Franklin
(1942– ): One of the four
original Greensboro sit-in
participants.