T he four freshmen at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University had finished a full day of classes that Monday afternoon in 1960. But Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, Ezell Blair Jr. and David Richmond had one more assignment ahead of them: writing a new chapter of our history.
As they walked into Woolworth's merchandise store on South Elm Street, the enormity of what they were about to do must have weighed heavily on their minds. Although the city of Greensboro, N.C., prided itself on a history of smooth race relations and what was seen as a sense of emergent progressivism at the time, it was still in the grip of Jim Crow segregation, discrimination and racial prejudice.
When these four students sat down at the shiny lunch counter to be served as equals with the white people who were already there, their action was seen and felt around the nation.
"There were heartfelt, strong convictions that this was the time to step up to the plate and take segregation on," said McNeil, one of the now-famous four. "The feeling was there, the reality was there, the need was there." The students, all of whom were on academic scholarship at the university, had hatched the plan and strategy in their dorm rooms.
During that first day, a white waitress informed them that in accordance with Woolworth's policy for its Southern stores, they would not be served, and a black employee sternly lectured them about how their action would hurt race relations. But for the most part, the sit-in was quiet.
And then, as McNeil recalls, an older white woman told them she was proud of what they were doing. "Her response was that she had wished they had done it sooner," McNeil said. For the four who otherwise sat alone that afternoon, it was a sign that encouraged them to return the next day.
Coming of Age
Back on campus, the four struggled to convince skeptical classmates of what they had done. Finally, they persuaded their fellow students that they were telling the truth, and many promised they would join the four the next day.
On Tuesday, more students showed up, including Lewis Brandon, a junior at A&T who came with his roommate. He says now that he was not too surprised at the activism the sit-ins exemplified. "Students at A&T had come from leadership backgrounds, and there was a legacy of activism," he said. "Being a black youth growing up in the '50s and '60s, used to Jim Crowism and segregation, we were prepared to take on roles of this nature."
And the roles were not easy-students were heckled on a daily basis mostly by white men and boys.
William Chafe, Mary Alice Baldwin professor of history and dean of the faculty of arts and sciences, added, "The four first-year students at A&T had come of age intellectually and politically at the time the Brown [school desegregation] decision was handed down in 1954.... By the time they got to college when they were 18
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