Media/Headlines
Picketing of Stores Planned
Demonstrations Slated in N.Y.
[Sitdown strike spreads. Front Page.]
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Wednesday, February 10, 1960.
F.W. Woolworth Co. stores in New York City will be picketed beginning Saturday, according to a field secretary of the Congress of Racial Equality who visited here yesterday.
Gordon Carey, one of two organizers of the interracial group, was in Greensboro to meet with leaders of Negro students who last week staged a sit-down protest of lunch counter segregation at the downtown Woolworth store and at the S.H. Kress & Co. store here.
Carey said staff members of the New York office of CORE met yesterday with two Woolworth officials in New York to discuss the Negro movement, which as now spread to four North Carolina cities.
Tells of Meeting
The 28-year-old Carey, the son of a Los Angeles Methodist minister, said CORE officials met with a Woolworth vice president named McLaren and with a man he identified as Harrington, who he said would take over McLaren's post in March.
Carey said "certain large" Woolworth stores in New York City would be picketed. He said the store in Harlem would be one of them.
The purpose of picketing the company's stores in New York, he said, would be to persuade as many people as possible not to patronize them and thus pressure chain officials into integrating the lunch counters in North Carolina and other parts of the South.
Spread Expected
He said also that the Negro protest demonstrations may spread soon to "a city in Northern South Carolina."
He said the other CORE organizer, James T. McCain, would be in the South Carolina city last night.
Sources in Greenville, S.C., said they felt that Rock Hill, with the Negro Friendship College, was probably being referred to by Carey.
The CORE organization for which Carey, a white man, works claims responsibility for integrating eating places in several cities, including Baltimore, Chicago and Kansas City, Kan.
Carey said he would talk with A&T College student leaders on "what kind of strategy, tactics and techniques" should be used.
"I'm glad they started with a chain organization," Carey said. He said he did not know what advice he would give if the students brought up the possibility of staging demonstrations in other business places which serve food.
'Scouting' Noted
Negro groups have been reported "scouting" the Eckerd's Drug Store and the Woolworth store in the Northeast Shopping Center and the Union Bus Station in the downtown area, apparently counting the number of seats at lunch counters.
Dr. Gordon W. Blackwell, chancellor of Woman's College, told the Daily News last night that he had withdrawn from efforts to effect a settlement of the situation.
Dr. Blackwell headed a group of college officials and student leaders from A&T, Bennett, Greensboro College and his own institution who met last week with representatives of the two variety stores and recommended a two-week recess in the Negro demonstrations.