International Civil Rights Museum, Greensboro, NC

 

International Civil Rights Museum

We leave the Smokies and head to Greensboro, North Carolina. We’re camping at the KOA here, which is close to our museum, but right next to the Interstate. Not very quiet. The International Civil Rights Museum is housed in the Woolworths store, where 4 A&T students started a sit-in to protest the fact that the lunch counter was white-only on February 1^st, 1960. 

The Lunch Counter

We took the staff-guided tour since we seem to learn a lot more that way than reading all the exhibits. It started with the phrase “all men are created equal” but pointed out that the men referred to at the time were white, protestant, and property owners, not all men (or women). The exhibit provided the background behind the Civil Rights movement: slavery, a brief period during reconstruction where blacks gained rights in the South, followed by Jim Crow laws (from the character of Jim Crow created in the 1830s). Segregation laws that created the concept of separate, but equal facilities, which were separate, but far from equal. For example: a coke machine with two sides: the white side charged a nickel and the black side 6 cents. The restrictions on voting like poll taxes or literacy tests with strange questions: “how many gum drops are in this jar” or “what’s the second sentence in the North Carolina constitution?” Then the story of violence against blacks: the Klu Klux Klan, lynching of blacks for minor offenses against whites, and the school and church bombings.

The Greensboro Four were spurred to action by the murder of Emmett Till. They decided to sit down at the F.W. Woolworth’s store and ask to be served. When denied service they refused to give up their seats. By February 5^th, about 300 black college students had joined the sit-in and this action started similar sit-ins throughout the South. When the college students left at the end of the spring, high school students continued the sit-in in Greensboro. Business was down because people either supported the movement or wanted to avoid the conflict at the store. Finally, at the end of July, the owner asked four of his black employees to sit at the lunch counter and be served. This ended the lunch counter segregation at the Woolworth store. While the title is International Civil Rights Museum, most of the museum is dedicated to the U.S. struggle, upstairs is an interesting exhibit about Helen Suzman, the housewife turned politician who battled for the end of Apartheid in South Africa. For 13 years she was the lone member of the Progressive Party in Parliament, a white woman who was constantly advocating for the end of Apartheid.

The Protests