History Book: Standing up by sitting down

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, February 3rd. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next, the WORLD History Book. Sixty-five years ago, the fight for civil rights and desegregation is in full swing. Four young men protest at a local lunch counter. WORLD’s Emma Perley brings us the story.

FRANKLIN MCCAIN: I certainly wasn’t afraid. And I wasn’t afraid because I was too angry to be afraid.

EMMA PERLEY: That’s Frank McCain. On February 1st, 1960, he’s one of four black college students whose peaceful but determined defiance is about to change history.

Inside an F.W. Woolworth five-and-dime in Greensboro, North Carolina, the young men sit down at the store’s stainless steel lunch counter and order coffee and a donut. The waitress refuses to serve them. She says: “Lunch service is for whites only.”

Just three feet away is a different counter. That’s where African-Americans are allowed to buy food.

An Associated Press reporter overhears the exchange between the waitress and the young men. He asks McCain and his friends what they’re going to do.

We’re going to stay until closing, the freshmen say. Then we’re going to come back again. And again. Until the store manager serves us some coffee.

At this, an elderly white woman leans toward the young men:

MCCAIN: She whispered in a calm voice, ‘Boys, I am so proud of you.’

The next day, the Greensboro Four—Joseph McNeil, Ezell Blair Jr., David Richmond and Franklin McCain—keep their word. But this time, more than 20 black students arrive to sit beside them, taking up a third of the counter space.

For four hours, from lunchtime until midafternoon, they sit quietly, doing homework. And for four hours, the wait staff refuses to serve them. Here’s Joe McNeil with the National Museum of American History:

MCNEIL: We decided that whatever actions we were gonna take, they’re gonna be nonviolent … on the third day, it started to get rough.

A friend of the Four alerts the media, and local reporters swarm Woolworth, armed with cameras, mics, and pens.

The media coverage sparks similar sit-ins throughout the South— like in Oklahoma City, Raleigh, and Richmond. These protests form the fighting front of the Civil Rights Movement, where many are already participating in bus boycotts. From NBC.

MCNEIL: And here the very young led the assaults on racial barriers. For five years they persistently demonstrated at lunch counters, department stores, and hotels. They won only small concessions.

The Greensboro Four aren’t the first ones to stage a sit-in. In Nashville, Tennessee, black students and civil rights activists peacefully sat at whites-only lunch counters a few months earlier in late 1959.

As the Civil Rights Movement heats up in the early 1960’s, sit-ins multiply. Many are not as peaceful as activists hope. At some restaurants, mobs form and protesters fear for their lives.

Like white civil rights activist Joan Trumpauer Mulholland. In 1963, Mulholland takes a seat at a segregated Woolworth counter in Jackson, Mississippi. Audio from her interview with Eater.

MULLHOLLAND: Everyone shopped at a five and dime. Everyone could afford it. And to not be welcomed as a customer at this one part of the store—the lunch counter—that was morally and legally indefensible.

Mulholland remembers the plan: one group of protesters would form a picket line down the street—diverting police, while another group would take up their posts at the Woolworth’s counter.

But the plan goes downhill fast.

MULLHOLLAND: Well, the picket line got arrested right away. So we decided we’d go down and see what was happening. And basically what was happening was, all hell was breaking loose.

The mob throws salt, pepper, ketchup and mustard at the protesters while police stand by, doing nothing. Worse, a black professor from nearby Tougaloo College is badly beaten.

That’s what Frank McCain means about things getting rough. Back in North Carolina, on the third day of their peaceful protest, 60 more students join the Greensboro Four.

White customers jeer at them and the Ku Klux Klan join the hecklers. Some try to drag the young black protesters from their seats. McCain again on CBS.

MCCAIN: If I were lucky, I would be carted off to jail for a long long time … and if I were not so lucky, then I would be going back to my campus in a pine box.

Police intervene and arrest those doing violence. By February 4th, more than 300 protesters cram the lunch counter and two days later, the crowd swells to 1,000.

Then someone calls in a bomb threat.

Woolworth’s quickly shuts its doors, and the protesters move to another segregated store across the street which also closes early.

Undaunted, the students continue to sit-in for five more months. And the fight for black equality in the city is just beginning. Black citizens unite and completely boycott segregated businesses in Greensboro. Local stores and restaurants lose hundreds of thousands of dollars.

This large-scale protest puts enormous pressure on business owners to desegregate. Finally, on July 25th, 1960, the Greensboro Woolworth store manager crosses the racial barrier into civil rights history. He invites four black employees to change out of their uniforms, sit at the counter, and eat lunch.

And so, what began with four, ends with four.

Decades later, McCain still seemed surprised at the widespread effect that he and three friends had on the Civil Rights Movement.

MCCAIN: I only sat on a dumb stool. I hadn’t even been served.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Emma Perley.

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