The Greensboro Four Non-fiction Reading Center
Directions:
Researchers often read secondary sources to gain some insight into various aspects of the time period or documents they are studying. Below are some questions to consider as you are working in this center.
1. Pick one reading to examine closely.
2. Read the piece 2 times if time permits.
3. Study the text features (headings, pictures, captions, text boxes). How do these help you better understand what you are reading?
3. Ask yourself:
4, Respond in your notebook, answering one of the questions above.
1. Pick one reading to examine closely.
2. Read the piece 2 times if time permits.
3. Study the text features (headings, pictures, captions, text boxes). How do these help you better understand what you are reading?
3. Ask yourself:
- What are the main ideas and supporting details?
- What does this piece teach us about the time period?
- Why do you think the author wrote this piece?
4, Respond in your notebook, answering one of the questions above.
Chapter in Freedom Flix: Civil Rights Movement, p. 22-23
Use your library card to log in to www.mylibraryNYC.org
- Go to digital resources
- Click on Brooklyn Public Library Articles/Databases
- Enter Barcode and Password
- Scroll down to Freedom Flix
Article: The Greensboro Four, Cobblestone Magazine |
by Gloria Harris
Four black college students entered a Woolworth's store in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1960. They sat down at the lunch counter and ordered food. As expected, the waitress refused to serve them. That simple act set the stage for student activism for decades to come. Joseph McNeil, David Richmond, Franklin McCain, and Ezell A. Blair, Jr., were students at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College (A&T). On February 1, 1960, they had finished classes for the day. They went into Greensboro to buy a few items in the variety store and then get something to eat. In Greensboro, as in many areas of the South, black people could make purchases at stores such as Woolworth's, but they could not sit down to eat at the lunch counter. The four young men knew the rule but had decided to take direct action against the segregated lunch counter. They left that day but came back the next one. They politely refused to leave their seats until they were served. While not the first sit-in, the actions of the Greensboro Four were important because they led to three significant results. First, they sparked a mass student movement. Within hours, news of theGreensboro sit-in spread. College students all over the South started their own sit-ins. Within 18 months, nearly 70,000 students had participated in similar protests. Television cameras captured well-dressed, polite young men and women getting pulled off stools, spat on, kicked, burned with cigarettes, and called ugly names. The outpouring of support was overwhelming. The Greensboro sit-in also led to support for the student movement from established civil rights organizations. The Greensboro Four were all members of the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) youth council. When they asked for help, their NAACP leader called the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)'s New York office. CORE sent a representative to provide nonviolent resistance training for the students. In addition, the NAACP's Legal Defense and Educational Fund provided assistance and bail money as hundreds of students were arrested for trespassing, disturbing the peace, unlawful assembly, and disobeying police orders. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) sent Ella Baker (see the accompanying article). Baker urged the young protesters to form their own organization. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) took root. The third important consequence of the Greensboro sit-in was the desegregation of lunch counters in almost 100 southern cities by that fall. Sit-ins spread to other public places, too. They desegregated movie theaters, amusement parks, and hotels. Wade-ins desegregated beaches. Read-ins desegregated libraries. The Greensboro Four showed how much could be accomplished by people when someone was willing to take the first brave step. Their actions inspired other young people to join the fight for civil rights. Student activism breathed new life into the movement during the 1960s. |
Picture Book:
Sit In: How Four Friends Stood Up by Sitting Down
by Andrea Davis Pinkney, Brian Pinkney (Illustrator)
The Woolworth Sit-In That Launched a Movement
by Michele Norris
On Feb. 1, 1960, four students from all-black North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College walked into a Woolworth five-and-dime with the intention of ordering lunch.
But the manager of the Greensboro Woolworth had intentions of his own — to maintain the lunch counter's strict whites-only policy.
Franklin McCain was one of the four young men who shoved history forward by refusing to budge.
McCain remembers the anxiety he felt when he went to the store that Monday afternoon, the plan he and his friends had devised to launch their protest and how he felt when he sat down on that stool.
"Fifteen seconds after ... I had the most wonderful feeling. I had a feeling of liberation, restored manhood. I had a natural high. And I truly felt almost invincible. Mind you, [I was] just sitting on a dumb stool and not having asked for service yet," McCain says.
"It's a feeling that I don't think that I'll ever be able to have again. It's the kind of thing that people pray for ... and wish for all their lives and never experience it. And I felt as though I wouldn't have been cheated out of life had that been the end of my life at that second or that moment."
McCain shares his recollection of the exchanges the four African-American men had with the lunch-counter staff, the store manager and a policeman who arrived on the scene — and also a lesson he learned that day.
An older white woman sat at the lunch counter a few stools down from McCain and his friends.
"And if you think Greensboro, N.C., 1960, a little old white lady who eyes you with that suspicious look ... she's not having very good thoughts about you nor what you're doing," McCain says.
Eventually, she finished her doughnut and coffee. And she walked behind McNeil and McCain — and put her hands on their shoulders.
"She said in a very calm voice, 'Boys, I am so proud of you. I only regret that you didn't do this 10 years ago.'" McCain recalls.
"What I learned from that little incident was ... don't you ever, ever stereotype anybody in this life until you at least experience them and have the opportunity to talk to them. I'm even more cognizant of that today — situations like that — and I'm always open to people who speak differently, who look differently, and who come from different places," he says.
On that first day, Feb. 1, the four men stayed at the lunch counter until closing. The next day, they came back with 15 other students.
y the third day, 300 joined in; later, 1,000.
The sit-ins spread to lunch counters across the country — and changed history.
by Michele Norris
On Feb. 1, 1960, four students from all-black North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College walked into a Woolworth five-and-dime with the intention of ordering lunch.
But the manager of the Greensboro Woolworth had intentions of his own — to maintain the lunch counter's strict whites-only policy.
Franklin McCain was one of the four young men who shoved history forward by refusing to budge.
McCain remembers the anxiety he felt when he went to the store that Monday afternoon, the plan he and his friends had devised to launch their protest and how he felt when he sat down on that stool.
"Fifteen seconds after ... I had the most wonderful feeling. I had a feeling of liberation, restored manhood. I had a natural high. And I truly felt almost invincible. Mind you, [I was] just sitting on a dumb stool and not having asked for service yet," McCain says.
"It's a feeling that I don't think that I'll ever be able to have again. It's the kind of thing that people pray for ... and wish for all their lives and never experience it. And I felt as though I wouldn't have been cheated out of life had that been the end of my life at that second or that moment."
McCain shares his recollection of the exchanges the four African-American men had with the lunch-counter staff, the store manager and a policeman who arrived on the scene — and also a lesson he learned that day.
An older white woman sat at the lunch counter a few stools down from McCain and his friends.
"And if you think Greensboro, N.C., 1960, a little old white lady who eyes you with that suspicious look ... she's not having very good thoughts about you nor what you're doing," McCain says.
Eventually, she finished her doughnut and coffee. And she walked behind McNeil and McCain — and put her hands on their shoulders.
"She said in a very calm voice, 'Boys, I am so proud of you. I only regret that you didn't do this 10 years ago.'" McCain recalls.
"What I learned from that little incident was ... don't you ever, ever stereotype anybody in this life until you at least experience them and have the opportunity to talk to them. I'm even more cognizant of that today — situations like that — and I'm always open to people who speak differently, who look differently, and who come from different places," he says.
On that first day, Feb. 1, the four men stayed at the lunch counter until closing. The next day, they came back with 15 other students.
y the third day, 300 joined in; later, 1,000.
The sit-ins spread to lunch counters across the country — and changed history.