Social Justice & Activism
60th Sit-In Anniversary Breakfast Celebration
N.C A&T held the 60th Sit-In Anniversary Breakfast Celebration at its Greensboro campus on Jan. 31, 2020. The event commemorates the first downtown Greensboro NC sit-in on Feb. 1, 1960, and celebrates the four A&T freshmen who led the effort to integrate whites-only lunch counters.
Pearsall Plan
"September 8,1956, N.C. voters approved the Pearsall Plan to prolong segregation & thwart Brown v Board of Education. A committee had decided integration ‘should not be attempted’ because of low support. Local votes on integration & vouchers for private tuition were est. All measures of the plan were unconstitutional."
60th Sit-In Anniversary Breakfast Celebration
Students from The Middle College at N.C. A&T lead high school students in a march from the A&T campus to the International Civil Rights Center & Museum, the former site of a Woolworth store where the first Greensboro sit-in was held on Feb. 1, 1960, during the 60th Sit-In Anniversary Breakfast Celebration at the A&T campus in Greensboro, N.C., on Friday, January 31, 2020.
7 Indians Arrested in Sit-In at a North Carolina School.
A total of 21 students were arrested that day along with their parents. They were accused of violating a court order forbidding them from “engaging in sitting-in, picketing, trespassing or otherwise interfering with the normal operation” of the school. Judge W.H.S. Burgwyn of the Harnett Superior Court in Lillington directed the Dunn School Committee and the Harnett County Board of Education to appear at the hearing and stated he thought the whole affair something of “a tempest in a teapot” as he expresses the hope it could be settled amicably.
A "Round Robin" demonstration
Image: March 15, 1962-A “round-robin” demonstrator asks to buy a ticket to the Carolina Theatre and gets a refusal at the box office. Once turned away, protesters went to the end of the line and waited their turns to try again.
Photographer: Jim Sparks, Durham Herald Sun.
Attorney George Greene (far left)
Attorney George Greene (far left) is seen at the Wake County Jail with St. Augustine College and Shaw University students after they were arrested outside the Cameron Village (present-day Village District) Woolworth’s before a planned sit-in protest, 12 February 1960.
Birth of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
On April 15, 1960, black college students guided by civil rights activist Ella Baker formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) at Shaw University in North Carolina. Inspired by the sit-ins that college students waged throughout the South in February 1960, Ella Baker organized a conference at Shaw University to bring these young activists together.
Cecil J. Williams
The photograph of him drinking from the "Whites Only" water fountain is thought to have been taken by Mr. Williams mentor, John Goodwin, who joined him for a talk at Richland Library in Columbia, South Carolina in September 2013 to share their experiences as Black photographers in South Carolina during Jim Crow and the Civil Rights era.
Christmas Boycott
Photograph: Left corner insert, Louis Lomax. Back row: James Baldwin, Oliver Killens, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee and (folk singer) Odetta Holmes are the artists who formed the Association of Artists for Freedom, which called for a Christmas boycott to protest the church bombing, and asked that, instead of buying gifts, people make Christmas contributions to civil rights organizations.
Coretta Scott King, and daughter, Yolanda,
April 9th 1968: Coretta Scott King, widow of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr (1929 - 1968), and their daughter, Yolanda, sit in a car as it leaves for Martin Luther King Jr’s funeral, Atlanta, Georgia.
The reflection of a group of mourners standing in front of a house is visible in the window of the car.
Dr. Rev. Pauli Murray
The wager was ten dollars. It was 1944, and the law students of Howard University were discussing how best to bring an end to Jim Crow. In the half-century since Plessy v. Ferguson, lawyers had been chipping away at segregation by questioning the “equal” part of the “separate but equal” doctrine—arguing that, say, a specific black school was not truly equivalent to its white counterpart.
Dr. Willa Johnson Cofield
Dr. Willa Johnson Cofield, during the years of segregation, she was a very courageous teacher activist of Halifax County, NC. After her major teacher rights victory in the high Federal courts, Willa Johnson eventually moved to New Jersey and got her PhD in Urban Planning at Rutgers.
Durham, NC, Feb. 12, 1938: Ellen Harris Refuses to Move for White Passenger
In Durham, North Carolina on February 12, 1938, a bus driver asked Ellen Harris to move to the back of the bus when a white passenger got on board. She refused, but offered to get off the bus if her fare was refunded. Instead of refunding her fare, the bus driver had Ms. Harris arrested for violating segregation laws.
Elreta Melton Alexander-Ralston
Elreta Melton Alexander-Ralston was born on March 19, 1919 - and died on March 14,1998. In 1947, after passing the North Carolina bar exam, Alexander became the first Black woman to practice law in North Carolina. However, it is important to note that Ruth Whitehead Whaley was the first Black woman admitted to the North Carolina bar, but she never practiced in the state. On December 2, 1968, Alexander became the first Black judge elected in North Carolina and the first Black woman to be elected an elected district court judge in the United States.
Fighting Environmental Racism in North Carolina
Photo collage description: Photo top left corner is David Caldwell, Jr.,he and fellow activists have tried for decades to push local, state, and federal officials to counteract environmental racism. Photograph by Jeremy M. Lange Photograph by Jeremy M. Lange.
Henry Plummer Cheatham
Born into slavery in what is now Henderson, North Carolina, Henry Cheatham was the child of an enslaved domestic worker about who little is known. An adolescent after the American Civil War, Cheatham benefited from country’s short lived commitment to provide educational opportunities to all children.
Hughie Maynor
"Native American civil rights are under-reported. Stories like my Dad’s need to be told to carry on to motivate and educate younger Native American generations of how important their heritage and culture is and the injustices that our parents struggled against so that we could have the civil right of a better education."
Hughie Maynor
Image description: A family photograph, with people sitting on the steps of a home stairwell. On the landing two men are holding a handmade quilt. Top Row left to right: Mr. Ernest Carter, Jr., Mr. Hughie Maynor. Middle Row: Paul Maynor, Paula Maynor Day, Brandy Maynor. Bottom Row: Hope Thompson, Caleb Maynor, Cassidy Maynor, Tonia Maynor
Joan Little
Left image - Joan Little (left) and one of her attorneys (Karen Galloway) wait for an elevator July 14, 1975 in the Wake County Courthouse where Little was on trial for the 1974 stabbing death of one of her jailers. Source: Washington Area Spark.
Right Image- Supports of Joan protesting her arrest. Source: U.S. Prison Culture website.
Journey of Reconciliation
The Journey of Reconciliation has also been referred to as the "First Freedom Ride."
In 1947 the Congress of Racial Equality & local citizens, black & white, protested bus segregation. Setting out from Washington, D.C., "freedom riders" tested compliance with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling barring segregation on interstate buses.
Mr. William C. Chance
Mr. William C. Chance Protested Segregated Rail Cars, 1948
On June 25, 1948, Parmele, NC native William Claudius Chance (23 Nov. 1880–7 May 1970), was made to get off an Atlantic Coast Line Railroad passenger train car in Emporia, Virginia, for refusing to move to a car for black passengers.
N. C. Indians Cited In School Sit-Ins --Dunn, NC
A total of 21 students were arrested that day along with their parents. They were accused of violating a court order forbidding them from “engaging in sitting-in, picketing, trespassing or otherwise interfering with the normal operation” of the school.
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rev. Ralph Abernathy
On October 30, 1967, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rev. Ralph Abernathy were arrested and forced to begin serving sentences in Birmingham jail because they led peaceful protests against unconstitutional bans on race mixing in Birmingham in 1963.
Rocky Mount Sanitation Workers Strike
The continuation of that civil rights movement was felt in Rocky Mount with a sanitation workers’ strike that started in July 1978.
Their efforts to win dignity and to build leaders was recognized today September 7, 2019, with a N.C. Highway Historical Marker at the BTW Community Center, 727 Pennsylvania Ave., Rocky Mount.
The 57th Anniversary Of The March On Washington For Jobs And Freedom
Today, August 28, 2020 is The 57th Anniversary Of The March On Washington For Jobs And Freedom - August 28, 1963
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, also known as the March on Washington or The Great March on Washington, was held in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, August 28, 1963.
The Honorable George R. Greene
Oct. 5, 1930 – March 17, 2013
Judge George Royster Greene, Sr., was born in Nashville, North Carolina to the late Dr. W. L. Greene and Georgia Royster Greene, on October 5, 1930. He was one of three sons. He transitioned into Heaven on Sunday, March 17, 2013, at his dearly beloved First Baptist Church.
The Wilmington Ten
September, 1968 - Williston Senior High school, a prominent all-Black high school was suddenly closed in order to integrate its 1100 students into the two white high schools. The sudden closing angered many in
the Black community who felt that while it was inevitable and desegregation was necessary, it did not have to and should not have occurred in the sudden and traumatic manner in which it did.
Walter Long (r) with his baby brother Sylvester
Photo: Walter Long (r) with his baby brother Sylvester*
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Black police officers…the forgotten story…
February 25, 2010
A few days ago, in celebration of Black History Month, the Winston-Salem Police Department honored some of the first black police officers in the city.
White terrorist bombings
Photo Collage Description: Top Row Left- Kelly Alexander Jr. standing in front of his home that he still lives in on Senior Drive which was bombed in 1965. His uncle Fred Alexander, whose house also was bombed, lived next door. Credit: Diedra Laird Dlaird.
Top Row Middle- Newspapers headlines about the November 22, 1965 White terrorist bombings. Credit: Charlotte Observer.
William Hooper Councill
William Hooper Councill was a teacher, social justice activist, college president, and editor.
He was born in March.22.1849, Or in July 12, 1848.
Council was formerly enslaved and the first president of Huntsville Normal School, which is today Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University in Normal, Alabama.
