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| Image: Marilyn Bellamy |
On February 1, 1960, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair Jr., Joseph McNeil and David Richmond, young African-American students at the Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina, entered the Greensboro, NC Woolworth’s and sat down on stools that were used exclusively by white customers. They asked to be served, and were refused. They did not get up and leave, launching a protest that lasted six months and helped change America.
On Monday, July 25, 1960, after nearly $200,000 in losses, store manager Clarence Harris asked four black employees, Geneva Tisdale, Susie Morrison, Anetha Jones, and Charles Bess, to change out of their work clothes and order a meal at the counter. They were, quietly, the first people of colour to be served at that Woolworth's lunch counter.
I took the above photo of the lunch counter at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington where it is preserved today as a moving and painful reminder.
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