Sit-in mural previews museum
By NANCY H. MCLAUGHLIN News & Record Staff Writer

September 24, 2002

GREENSBORO -- An eye-catching addition to the Elm Street landscape has been unveiled at the International Civil Rights Museum.

A local marketing and advertising firm has worked since the summer to find a way to tell the sit-in story on the exterior of the old downtown Woolworth's department store -- and to provide a preview for what's in store once the full-scale museum opens, said executive director McArthur Davis.

Kevin Ervin, 25, of Greensboro, stops to read the
new addition to the International Civil Rights Museum
on Elm Street in downtown Greensboro.
(Tom Copeland/ ©News & Record)

The dime-store is where the sit-in movement -- which is credited with helping change racist practices across the South -- was sparked. The museum is expected to open in 2005.

"It will tell the history of the building without waiting for the museum to be up and running," said Davis, whose board also will unveil a Web site address at a noon ceremony in front of the building at February One Place and Elm Street.

The Greensboro-based Burris Agency took over the 68-by-110-inch window displays across the front of the building. Until today, those displays have been covered by black paper.

"We wanted the windows to serve as a billboard for cars going by and pedestrian traffic," said LeAnn Wilson-McGuire, the company's creative director.

The company used a mix of photographs and newspaper clippings in a mural design. It also includes a timeline.

"It's a timeline of how those events not only affected North Carolina, but the country," McGuire said. "It's a great story."

The work tells the story of four N.C. A&T freshmen in 1960 when they refused to leave the department store's whites-only lunch counter until they were served. The protest sparked a national movement to desegregate eating places throughout the South.

An 8-foot section of the counter and four stools have been on permanent display at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington since 1995.

The museum's board hopes to raise as much as $15 million to turn the building into a museum. It will take an estimated $10 million to build a museum and a $5 million endowment to ensure its survival, said David Hoard, the museum's chief executive officer.

Beginning Sept. 30, the museum kicks off its Civil and Human Rights Lecture Series, featuring Sarah J. Bloomfield, the executive director of the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington. Museum officials have been working with Bloomfield's office in planning the new museum.

Contact Nancy H. McLaughlin at 373-7049 or nmclaughlin@news-record.com

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