by Paul C. Clark
February 18, 2010
The 50th anniversary of the Feb. 1, 1960 F.W. Woolworth sit-in in
Greensboro arrived with great fanfare, including national media
coverage of the opening of the International Civil Rights Center and
Museum. A less heralded, but no less important anniversary to High
Point came a little more quietly on Feb. 11, when a series of events
commemorated the sit-ins that eventually integrated the Woolworth's
and other businesses there.
On Thursday, Feb. 11 at noon, a group gathered outside the Best
Western on Main Street, the former site of the Woolworth's, for a
prayer vigil to remember the sit-in.
That evening, the non-profit February 11 Association held a
commemorative dinner at the Showplace exhibition center on Commerce Street.
To those in attendance, the dinner was a sign of just how far High
Point has come since 1960. When 26 students from the former all-black
William Penn High School shook up the segregated status quo, they
were met with opposition from police, angry crowds and the all-white
High Point city government. Thursday's dinner drew black City
Councilmembers Mary Lou Blakeney and Foster Douglas, as well as High
Point Mayor Becky Smothers and a host of local dignitaries.
The dinner was an effort by people involved in the High Point sit-in,
including Blakeney, one of its four organizers, to raise the public
profile of the sit-in, which was to some degree lost in the chaos of
civil rights demonstrations that followed the Greensboro protest.
The Rev. Rufus Newlin, the pastor of First Fruits Teaching and
Outreach Ministries, who welcomed those at the dinner, said the High
Point sit-in should touch the minds and hearts of the nation as much
as the better-known Greensboro protest.
Newlin said, "Unfortunately, few people really know what happened in
this city."
The most fascinating part of the dinner was Blakeney's recollection
of the sit-in and the events leading up to it. The High Point sit-in
is believed to be the only recorded protest during the long civil
rights movement that was initiated and executed by high school students.
Blakeney, who was 15 at the time of the sit-in, said she and the
other students were tired of not being able to use public bathrooms
and water fountains or eat at lunch counters, but faced a host of
other indignities on a daily basis. She said, "I still remember
trying to buy my Girl Scout uniform at Belk's department store and
not being able to try it on."
After the Greensboro sit-in, students at William Penn feared the
Greensboro protesters would be killed, but also admired their
bravery. "People thought these kids were crazy," Blakeney said. "I know I did."
Inspired by the Greensboro event, High Point teens met at the home of
William Penn students Miriam Lynn Fountain, then 16, and Brenda Jean
Fountain, then 14, on Elizabeth Street on the south side of High
Point. They were joined by the Rev. Elton Cox, the pastor of Pilgrim
Congregational Church in High Point and a veteran of the civil rights
movement who had participated in his first demonstration, at an A&W
Root Beer drive-in restaurant in Kankakee, Illinois, in 1946.
Blakeney said Cox was reluctant to launch a protest in High Point in
the dangerous days after the Greensboro sit-in.
Blakeney said the students literally begged Cox to act, citing the
courage of the Greensboro protesters.
"Why Rev. Cox?" she said. "Because he was one of the 13 original
freedom riders. We were in good hands with Rev. Cox better than Allstate."
With Cox on board, the group began planning the High Point sit-in
under his tutelage. A dedicated advocate of non-violent protest, Cox
schooled the students in a strategy of total non-response to attacks,
being spit on and verbal taunts.
"We were not going downtown cold," Blakeney said. "And we were not
going downtown needing anger-management classes. If you could not
make that promise, you couldn't be a part of that group."
That commitment to not responding, even under intense provocation,
was to be sorely tested.
A large number of students volunteered for the sit-in, but Cox
whittled that number down to 26 he thought could handle the expected pressure.
By the day of the sit-in, William Penn teachers had learned of the
plan and were telling students not to attend, because they would get
into trouble. Blakeney said the 26 students just said, "Yes, ma'am"
without arguing. "On the day of reckoning, the school was buzzing all
day long," she said.
The students, following Cox's plan, walked to the Woolworth's and
entered through the back door of the store, pretending to be
shoppers. At a prearranged signal the doffing of Cox's hat the
students sat down at the lunch counter: the girls sitting on the
stools, the boys standing behind them to protect them from the expected crowds.
Blakeney said she remembers that a song was playing on a transistor
radio what she called the iPod of the 1960s. That song was Jack
Scott's 1960 hit, "What in the World's Come Over You?"
One can picture the befuddlement of the waitresses when faced by the
well-dressed, polite but totally unexpected black students asking to be served.
"The waitress decides, OK, you've lost your minds," Blakeney said.
"What are you doing here?"
A waitress went and got the manager, who ran to the phone and called
the police. Two High Point police officers arrived, no more sure what
to do than the manager.
The real trouble soon started when a crowd of white men in ducktail
greaser haircuts and tight jeans arrived and began shouting racial
epithets at the protesters, who, following Cox's orders, didn't respond.
"It was hard not to turn around," Blakeney said. "It was hard not to
say anything. You couldn't defeat the mission, no matter what.
Sometimes it was the hardest thing in the world to do, not to retaliate."
The manager and police decided to close the store, ejecting the
protesters, who were followed by the angry, jeering mob on their long
walk back to Washington Street and the safety of its black
neighborhood. No major violence broke out, but the protesters were
pelted with snowballs, some filled, Blakeney said, with needles and pins.
Blakeney said, "I never saw such naked hatred in my life as I saw at
that time."
In the days after Woolworth's closed, protesters targeted a series of
institutions, including the S.H. Kress & Co. five-and-dime,
McDonald's, Dairy Queen, local swimming pools, the Center and
Paramount theaters and four major white churches.
Blakeney was one of three protesters who used a local swimming pool.
She said that event was more frightening than the Woolworth's sit-in,
because there were only three protesters instead of 26. "We knew
somebody could kill you in the water with no one seeing," she said.
Blakeney left High Point shortly afterward to attend a segregated
nursing school in Atlanta, and didn't get to see Jim Crow come
crashing down in her hometown. She said, "I can't tell you, today,
exactly when those barriers fell."
Blakeney said that nursing school was later integrated because
someone donated money for a dormitory under the condition that the
school drop segregation.
Smothers called the anniversary a special day for many people but
said only those who were involved knew how special. She said Cox must
have been "a heck of a leader," and said that the Feb. 11 protesters
and hundreds of others contributed to making High Point a better city.
Smothers said, "If you look at the young people that were there that
day, many of them have been a part of the history of High Point and
moving it forward."
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