Reply #10: Greensboro, NC the site of the first sit-ins, the start of the Civil Right [View All]

[bobbieinok]

Rights Movement

http://www.sitins.com/story.shtml

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The story of the Greensboro sit-ins .
By JIM SCHLOSSER, News & Record Staff Writer
Originally published in 1998

On Feb. 1, 1960, the Greensboro Four, as they would later be called, felt isolated and alone as they sat at that whites-only lunch counter at the Woolworth Store on South Elm Street.

They were seeking more than what they ordered — sodas, coffee, doughnuts. They were attacking the social order of the time. The unwritten rules of society required black people to stay out of white-owned restaurants, to use only designated drinking fountains and restrooms, to sit in the rear of Greensboro city buses, in a separate balcony at the Center Theatre and in segregated bleachers during sports events at War Memorial Stadium.



The four black youths — Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, Ezell Blair Jr. and David Richmond, all still teenagers and all freshmen on academic scholarships at N.C. A&T State University — had entered the unknown. McCain, who grew up in Washington and spent one year attending Greensboro's Dudley High School, says he expected to be arrested, beaten to a pulp or worse.

All four would emerge unscathed and eventually be recognized as heroes of the civil rights movement.

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