Media/Headlines
When integration was 'just a matter of time'
January 27, 1980
It was an unseasonably warm day for the first of February. But on that day 20 years ago — Feb. 1, 1960 — what was happening at the lunch counter of Woolworth’s five and dime on Greensboro’s downtown South Elm Street was even more unnatural.
The four young men wanting service at the counter were Negroes. Everybody knew that “coloreds” weren’t supposed to go to a lunch counter for whites only.
David Richmond, Ezell Blair Jr., Joseph McNeil and Franklin McCain knew it, too.
As they walked to the store from the N.C. A&T State College campus where they were freshmen, they had bolstered each other’s confidence using the ultimate weapon of young blacks of the era: a dare, a challenge to the other’s manhood. Still they were scared. They expected to be arrested.
Before taking seats at the lunch counter, they purchased toothpaste, school supplies and black polish for their ROTC shoes. McCain even wore his ROTC uniform. The others wore coats and ties, standard dress for A&T students in 1960.
At the lunch counter, a chicken salad club sandwich cost 55 cents, a turkey dinner a dime more. Blair wanted a cup of coffee, which cost a nickel. A white waitress said she was sorry, but “we don’t served colored here.”
“I beg to disagree with you,” Blair replied. “You just finished serving me at a counter only two feet from here.”
“Negroes eat on the other end,” she answered, pointing to the stand-up section of the counter. Blair asked why the store would let him purchase items at nine other counters but refuse him service at the tenth. He requested to see the lunch counter manager, but she was out of the store. The waitress hurriedly walked away; the students remained seated.
The next words they heard were the scathing remarks of a young black woman, a helper on the steam table: “You’re acting stupid, ignorant! That’s why we can’t get anywhere today. You know you’re supposed to eat at the other end. It’s people like you make our race so bad.”
“That was a low blow but we knew she was put up to it,” Blair said later.
But then encouragement came from an unexpected quarter and it was to sustain them the rest of the afternoon. Two elderly white women walked up to them and one said, “I think what you’re doing is right. Keep it up.”
Store manager C.L. Harris, when told by a waitress of the sit-in, went immediately to the police station three blocks away. Police Chief Paul Calhoun informed him police could do nothing unless Harris wanted to file a trespass warrant.
Mayor George Roach learned of the sit-in shortly afterward from City Manager James Townsend, who had been told of it by police. Roach’s first reaction was to suggest that Harris integrate the lunch counter. But Roach said, “He (Harris) was just adamant, he refused.”
In anticipation of the problem years earlier, Woolworth’s Atlanta regional office had instructed the store’s employees to ignore protesters and to avoid arresting its customers. “We were under strict orders not to insult them at all,” said Rachael Holt, the lunch counter manager.
“They can just sit there; it’s nothing to me,” Harris said.
Chief Calhoun did send a couple of white officers to make sure no trouble would develop. The policemen stared at the group, pounding their nightsticks in their hands, but nothing was said.
“You could see the anger in their faces,” McCain said, “but to us it was a source of strength.” Whatever the police did, they intended to remain non-violent.
“We were convinced that only through non-violence could we accomplish anything,” said Richmond. It was, said Blair, a “passive resistance” movement.
Outside the store a crowd gathered. The store closed 15 minutes early.
The four walked back to their dormitory, Scott Hall, with a quiet jubilance, and with an idea of what to do next.
“We saw the need to get other people involved, and the logical thing was to seek out people with responsible leadership,” McNeil said. They spent the evening contacting students in Scott and Cooper dorms. “I don’t think I ate during that night, I was so exuberant,” Blair said.
Dean of Men William H. Gamble, who resided in Scott Hall, knew before the four returned to campus what they had done. He had received a telephone call from Woolworth’s Raleigh office asking for his cooperation. “I asked them if Woolworth’s had a policy of arresting their customers and they said no. So I said they should be served.”
Gamble was given responsibility for the students’ safety by Dr. Warmath T. Gibbs, president of A&T. He made no effort to interfere with them.
There was another aspect of the sit-in on Feb. 1. Local newspapers didn’t learn about it until after it was over.
The next morning, a half-hour after the store opened, 25 men and four women — all black — sat down at the counter. All were mindful of Blair’s evening-before instructions that this was to be a movement of passive resistance. They would not respond violently to any provocation.
A waitress told them they couldn’t be served: “It’s store regulation — a custom.” Blair answered, “We are planning to sit as long as necessary, until we are served.” Counter manager Hold said she realized then that integration “was really here to stay; it was just a matter of time.”
Reporters were there the second day. The story was published and broadcast. It was transmitted to the wire services and national television networks.