Tomorrow marks the 50th anniversary of the first Greensboro Sit-In, an occasion that will be commemorated with the (much-belated) opening of the International Civil Rights Center and Museum (ICRCM) in the old F.W. Woolworth building in downtown Greensboro, North Carolina. For those who sadly don't know what the Greensboro Sit-Ins were, a little back-story: On February 1, 1960, in a deliberate and long-discussed act of nonviolent civil disobedience, four black NC A&T students walked into the F. W. Woolworth store in downtown Greensboro, and sat down at the “whites-only” lunch counter for coffee. These four brave young men – David Richmond, Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, and Ezell Blair Jr. - were not only refused service, they were harassed by white patrons, the police were called and the store closed early. The store manager hoped that was the end of the matter.
It was only the beginning...
The following morning, the four students walked back into Woolworth - this time accompanied by over two dozen other black students. Once again, they were refused service, but they did get a lot of media attention, both local and national. The next day, more than 60 students flooded into Woolworth, taking up all the seats. By now, students from Bennett College and the still-segregated Dudley High School were active participants in the sit-ins. By February 5, more than 300 protesters were showing up every day and white students were joining the black protesters, although by now white counter-protesters were showing up as well, trying to nab lunch counter seats before the pro-integration students could arrive. The city was on edge, with rumors of imminent racial violence in the air. The protests had quickly spread to another lunch counter at the S.H. Kress & Co building and to other cities across the country. By mid-February, there were active sit-ins ongoing in Winston-Salem, Charlotte, Raleigh, Durham, Richmond, Chattanooga, even as far away as New York City.
The forces of the status quo did not give in easily, however. A bomb threat was called into Greensboro police, forcing the evacuation of Woolworth and the temporary closing of its lunch counter, as well as the one inside the Kress building. Protracted attempts at mediation by various community and political figures were dragged out for weeks. Finally by the end of March, it was clear that neither Woolworth nor Kress (nor for that matter, any other downtown business) was willing to integrate. They chose to close their lunch counters entirely rather than allow them to be integrated. The activists commenced a full-scale boycott of the offending stores. It was not until July 26 that both the Kress and Woolworth stores' lunch counters were finally and completely integrated.
The Greensboro sit-ins were presaged by the sit-ins led by Mahatma Gandhi, as well as previous sit-ins from Oklahoma City to Durham, among other places. The national attention gained by the Greensboro sit-ins sparked a nationwide sit-in movement. As the ICRCM's website notes, “By August 1961, more than 70,000 people had participated in sit-ins, which resulted in more than 3,000 arrests. Sit-ins at 'whites only' lunch counters inspired subsequent kneel-ins at segregated churches, sleep-ins at segregated motel lobbies, swim-ins at segregated pools, wade-ins at segregated beaches, read-ins at segregated libraries, play-ins at segregated parks and watch-ins at segregated movies.” After years of protests, in 1964, Congress passed and President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964, forever banning discrimination in “public accommodations.” As they say, the rest is history.
Racial Progress
The Greensboro sit-ins have a deeply personal resonance for me today. Both my girlfriend and myself were born and raised in Greensboro and went to the same high school, though we didn't begin dating until years later. I'm white, she's black. I mention this not to give myself some sort of “post-racial” pat on the back, but to highlight just how far we've come. Fifty years after the sit-ins, it would be inconceivable to either of us that we couldn't walk into any establishment in Greensboro and sit down at any table or counter to eat and enjoy each others' company. And the progress has come even more rapidly than that. When we first met in high school a decade ago, there were no mixed-race couples to speak of. There would certainly have been a hell of a lot of eyebrows raised back then, particularly at a white guy with a black girl. But now, almost everywhere I look, I see interracial couples, white high school guys with their arms around black high school girls (and vice-versa), and no one seems to bat an eye. It's still a little new for me, but for these kids, it's the new normal. And their younger brothers and sisters in elementary school will never know a time in their lives when anyone could even ask the question “Is America ready for a black (or multiracial) president?” That question would be completely meaningless to them. Time heals all wounds, even the bitterest racial wounds a nation could possibly inflict on itself over four centuries.
This is not to downplay how far we as a nation still have to go down the path towards complete equality and true justice. It was not until 1967 that the Supreme Court struck down the law which would have prohibited me from marrying my girlfriend in this (and every Southern) state. According to Gallup, more than ¾ of Americans support interracial marriage (and 95% of 18-29 year-olds do), but as recently as 1994, that number was under 50%. Even my life, our relationship has touched off racial tension, mostly from her mother, who has over the last six months progressed from ignoring my existence entirely to simply ignoring it most of the time. Progress is still progress though, however slow and painstaking. Even in the South, it's hard to find people under 30 who get worked up about gay marriage, much less interracial marriage. For either one, the solution is the same, as my old pastor used to say: “Eventually, us old farts will die off!” Each succeeding generation has lower levels of overt racism and homophobia than the previous one, and as each one shuffles off this mortal coil, it lowers the overall level of bigotry in society and shifts the “Overton window” of socially-acceptable behavior in a radically more progressive direction. The solution is time.
"Color-blindness"
Time is also the problem. Not to contradict myself, but the very incomprehensibility of Jim Crow, segregated lunch counters, and public lynching, much less slavery, to someone of my generation poses a real danger. Much has been made of their predilection for fact-free assertions, but conservatives also thrive on forgetfulness, on the historical amnesia of the American people. This tendency is especially pronounced for those white Americans like myself who are much too young to remember life before integrated schools. They are thus more likely, for example, to buy into the whole idea that “busing” to achieve integration is ridiculous and not to notice the racism inherent in many (though not all) arguments for “local neighborhood schools.” They are blind to white-flight, to racial profiling. They are more likely to accept the conservative clap-trap that affirmative action is simply discriminatory “reverse racism” against white students and workers (who, it goes unspoken, simply MUST be more qualified than the minority to which the job is given instead). They are much more likely to agree with the insidious assertion that “it's been 50 years since the Civil Rights Movement, shouldn't black people have picked themselves off the ground, dusted themselves off, and gotten ahead in life instead of always asking for a handout?” (though it's usually not stated quite this baldly.) It puts young white Americans at risk to being manipulated by subtle race-baiting demagogues. We are not more likely than any other generation to exhibit high levels of racism (quite the opposite), but precisely because we have no memory of a time when there was so much overt racism, we are less likely to go along with attempts to ameliorate the after-effects of Jim Crow, less likely to have patience for any “special treatment” for any racial or ethnic group. The danger in being “color-blind” is that it also blinds you to the racism that still exists today.
My plea to older Americans is to remember that people of my generation have no memory of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s, much less the era of institutionalized white racism that preceded it. We learn about all of this in (often-biased and inaccurate) high school textbooks; it's just a few chapters after the Civil War and as remote to the average high school student as the Paleolithic Era. Unless there is a push to bring racism home to the younger generations in the same way that antisemitism is, through classroom assignments, videos, reading assignments, and field trips to places like the International Civil Rights Center and Museum (places where they can see “whites only” signs on drinking fountains and bathrooms, where they are confronted with images of the barbarity of racism), the road ahead could be rocky indeed. Only such first-hand knowledge of the past can truly lead us to view others with compassion and understanding. American society's progress in race relations should lead to optimism, but not overconfidence. The struggle to truly make America a land where, as George Washington wrote, we “give to bigotry no sanction,” is a perpetual struggle to break down the barriers we throw up inside our own heads. Only when we free our minds will we know true freedom.
So tomorrow night after work, my girlfriend and I are going to head to our favorite place, downtown Greensboro, sit down at our favorite hamburger joint, and people-watch out the window while we eat. We'll look right across the road at the old Woolworth's building. We'll watch businessmen carrying briefcases. We'll watch cops go by on Segways. We'll watch little toddlers run down the sidewalk, leading their parents to huff-and-puff after them, children without the shadow of bigotry yet imprinted on their minds. When they'll glance in the window as they run past and our glances meet, I almost think I'll be able to see the Promised Land in their eyes.