A monument to courage at the Greensboro five and dime
http://www.southernstudies.org/2010/02/a-monument-to-courage-at-the-greensboro-five-and-dime.html
By Sue Sturgis
February 1, 2010
It was 50 years ago today that Ezell Blair Jr., Franklin McCain,
Joseph Alfred McNeil and David Richmond -- four freshmen at
Agricultural and Technical College, a historically black school in
Greensboro, N.C. -- defied Jim Crow segregation by sitting at a
whites-only Woolworth lunch counter in that Southern city and asking
to be served.
Refused service and abused by white customers, the students still
kept coming back, joined by others, day after day. Their nonviolent
act of courage was inspired by others before it and inspired others
like it, bringing momentum to a movement that would transform
America. Within two months, sit-ins were taking place in 54 cities in
nine states. Within six months, the Woolworth lunch counter in
Greensboro was desegregated.
Today that same building on Greensboro's Elm Street will host the
grand opening of the International Civil Rights Center and Museum, a
30,000-foot archive, museum and teaching center devoted to the
international struggle for civil and human rights. The museum's
opening is the culmination of an effort that began in 1993, when
local Guilford County Commissioner Melvin "Skip" Alston and
Greensboro City Councilman Earl Jones established the nonprofit
Sit-In Movement Inc. to raise funds to keep the historic Woolworth,
since closed, from being turned into a parking lot.
Over the years the project's cost grew into the tens of millions of
dollars: At one point a stream was found flowing through the
building's foundation, necessitating extensive work. Voters in
Greensboro -- a city with a contentious racial past and present --
twice voted down bond referenda to provide public financing for the
project. But the museum ultimately did find financial support from
the city, as well as from North Carolina, Guilford County, the
National Park Service and the Bryan Foundation.
The gala program to celebrate the museum's opening planned for this
past Saturday was postponed to Feb. 13 due to heavy snow, which also
resulted in the cancellation of Sunday's Celebration of Unity
Service. But the museum's grand opening is scheduled to go today on
as planned, with original sit-in participant McCain among the
speakers. The museum's exhibits aim to help visitors who never
experienced legal segregation better understand what Jim Crow looked
like, and to educate the public about the movement that toppled it.
"To see those four young men sitting down at that lunch counter on
those stools at Woolworth was a source of inspiration," says former
civil rights leader and Congressman John Lewis (D-Ga.) in this public
service announcement for the museum: [See URL for video.]
.
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