An old lesson relearned: Doors won't open without being forced
By Joe Knox, Daily News Staff Writer

February 1, 1970

Greensboro’s first round of demonstrations aimed at lowering racial barriers in places catering to the public began with the lunch counter sit-ins at Woolworth’s and Kress’s variety stores in February 1960.

They came to an end about six months later when management of both stores went against “local custom” and made their food services available to all races.

In a sense, what happened at the variety stores was dress rehearsal for a later all-out bid to open every place of public accommodation in the city. But it was a long time between demonstrations. The next one did not come until late in 1962.

There was a good deal of talk meanwhile. But Negro leaders and young apprentices beginning to spearhead civil rights movements had to re-learn what they described as an old lesson: Nobody was going to give them anything; if a door was to be opened it would have to be forced open.

Demonstrations keyed to non-violence resumed in midtown Greensboro, some of them involving hundreds of students from A&T and Bennett Colleges. They continued on a fairly sustained basis through the winter and spring of 1963 and began to bring Greensboro a national reputation as a city of chronic racial discord.

The reputation was not entirely deserved, because for all of the people who demonstrated, and the numbers of potentially explosive situations to arise, few persons were arrested on charges of violence, and through it all, not one was hurt.

The police made hundreds of arrests, practically all of them on charges of trespassing or obstructing traffic, but a spirit of good humor generally prevailed. Students sought arrest as a mark of protest and a badge of honor.

Nearly seven years have elapsed since this last mass demonstration in Greensboro, and a full decade since the first sit-in. How do leaders in the quest for racial equality in those days view the scene at the beginning of 1970?

Most of those queried agreed with Dr. George Simkins Jr., a Greensboro dentist and longtime president of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, that Negroes do not have any appreciable problems with public accommodations in Greensboro today.

But he revealed a gloomy outlook on other areas of race relations and was particularly critical of the City Board of Education for what he described as “any meaningful change in status quo” of racial composition of local schools. He said this has resulted in “impatience, frustration, bitterness and presently the ascendancy of the new black militant and separatist movement.

“Local school authorities have directed all their efforts, along with large sums of tax funds, toward opposition to school desegregation, instead of using their great resources toward making compliance with the law a meaningful transition that could benefit the school system and the entire city as well,” he said.

The Rev. Cecil Bishop, pastor of Trinity AME Zion Church, was in substantial agreement with Dr. Simkins though his language was somewhat milder.

“Some gains have been made in public accommodations and some in employment, but basically, the real issues have not changed very much in the past decade,” said the Rev. Bishop, who has just been closely identified with the civil rights movements in Greensboro for almost 10 years.

Bishop touched another point no one else mentioned: “While people complain about the outside influences, intruders and the federal government directing our lives, most of the progress in civil rights has come from action in Washington.

“There is the public accommodations law, the voting rights law, and the Supreme Court rulings on school desegregation.

Greensboro’s mayor, Jack Elam, was city attorney during the 1960 demonstrations and was closely associated with efforts of the city government to protect rights of both the protesting students and the public.

He too spoke of pseudo-revolutionaries. Whereas protests of the 1960s were aimed at what he described as “proper goals,” today “we are in a different ball game.”

Demonstrations appear to be aimed at generating violence, apparently for the sake of violence itself, he said.

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