President Obama and the Lunch Counter in Greensboro

[ncgrits]

Yesterday I was in Greensboro at the Obama rally. We were lined up for blocks and blocks to get in. But as we neared the site of the rally, we walked right past the F.W. Woolworth store that was the site of the famous lunch counter protest. Everybody around us got kind of quiet when we passed it and many of us got choked up. Here we were walking past history on our way to another piece of history--to hear our first African-American president.

It was awesome--in the true meaning of the word.

[BumRushDaShow]

1. So they kept that Woolworth's there?

I guess for historic purposes... They closed all the Woolworth's 5 & 10s here in Philly pretty quickly when they went out of business.

I bet you had a ball though!!!

[1Hippiechick]

4. I believe the counter is in the Smithsonian....here is a link you might find interesting....

http://americanhistory.si.edu/Brown/history/6-legacy/freedom-struggle-2.html

[gblady]

6. oh my,

that article was so moving...
the looks on their faces...

noticed the person in the kitchen was black...
can work...but can't eat there...

Thanks for sharing

[liberal N proud]

2. Awesome

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

3. Wow

that brought tears to my eyes. I'm sure Martin Luther King and the other Civil Rights martyrs are looking down from Heaven and smiling.

[Cha]

5. Our country has come a long way as a whole..

Too bad for the ones stuck in the past.

[flpoljunkie]

7. Very moving.

[Clio the Leo]

8. My master's thesis was on the sit-ins.....

... actually on the Nashville group who was organized before the NC group but that's another story.

One of the things that struck me that Rep. John Lewis said at the time was that people didn't understand that it was about MORE than a hamburger ..... sounds quaint but it's true.

I know *I* am glad that so many from that movement have lived to see this moment ..... I can only imagine how they feel.

And we all grieve for those who didn't.

[Hepburn]

9. K&R....

...to remember it was not even 50 years ago that this kind of bad shit went on in our supposedly free country where everyone supposedly was equal.



Joseph McNeil (from left), Franklin McCain, Billy Smith and Clarence Henderson sit in protest at the whites-only lunch counter at Woolworth during the second day of peaceful protest, Feb. 2, 1960.

[ladyVet]

10. That was just a couple of weeks before my 2nd birthday.

I remember as a young child--5 or 6 years old--going to the Roses dept store, which had a lunchionette (I think that's what it was called), and when blacks came in to eat, the other customers got up and left. I asked my mother once why we had to leave, as we hadn't ordered yet, and she said that people would be mean to us if we didn't.

How far the world has come, but such a long journey left to go.