Sitting In for Civil Rights

HISTORY This Week

The HISTORY® Channel | Back Pocket Studios

Society & Culture, History

4.5 • 4.2K Ratings

🗓️ 1 February 2021

⏱️ 22 minutes

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Summary

February 1, 1960. Four young Black men, David Richmond, Franklin McCain, Jibreel Khazan and Joseph McNeil gather outside the Woolworth department store in Greensboro, North Carolina. All four are college freshman, and they have come downtown with a single purpose: to desegregate the department store, one of the most visible embodiments of racism and segregation in America. These teenagers stage a sit in that sparks a youth movement across the nation and reignites the sputtering Civil Rights Movement. How exactly did the Greensboro sit-ins come together? And why did this particular protest spread like wildfire?

Special thank you to our guest, Dr. Traci Parker Associate Professor at University of Massachusetts at Amherst and author of Department Stores and the Black Freedom Movement.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The History Channel, original podcast.
0:04.8	History this week, February 1, 1960. I'm Sally Helm.
0:12.5	It's a brisk afternoon, colder than it's been recently. The four students meet on campus
0:18.0	in front of the library. They stayed up most of last night talking, planning. They know that what
0:24.2	they're going to do today is going to change their lives and their family's lives,
0:29.2	though they likely have no idea just how far it will reach. Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil,
0:36.5	David Richmond, and E.L. Blair Jr., who would later change his name to Tribrial Cousin.
0:41.9	They're all freshmen at the Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina in Greensboro.
0:47.4	They're all black and living with the indignities and injustice of segregation.
0:52.5	At the Woolworths Five-and-Dime Department Store in downtown Greensboro, they'd be allowed to
0:57.2	buy clothes but not try them on in the fitting rooms. They'd be allowed to enter the store and
1:03.1	browse the shelves, but they wouldn't be allowed to eat at the store's lunch counter.
1:08.0	Woolworths is a really visible emblem of an unjust system. And today, they've decided to do
1:15.5	something. They're going to walk into that Woolworths, walk up to that lunch counter, and sit down.
1:21.3	Cousin is in his Sunday best, Suit and Tie. McCain is wearing his ROTC uniform. Richmond is in the
1:28.8	Leather Hat. McNeil has on his Italian coat. The walk to downtown is about 15 minutes, and the men
1:35.3	are quiet most of the way. They're wondering what might happen at the lunch counter. Will they be
1:40.9	arrested, attacked? Could they be killed? Despite the danger they're committed. They reach the
1:48.3	Woolworths and open the doors. Today, what happened when these four men sat down at that lunch
1:57.6	counter in North Carolina? And why did this particular protest manage to reignite a sputtering
2:04.3	civil rights movement? The Zodiac Killer. Cleopatra's Lost 2, the Roanoke Colony disappearance.
2:15.3	Join Lawrence Fishburn as he investigates these historical mysteries from every angle so that
	...

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