Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/16726
NEW INTERNATIONAL CIVIL RIGHTS MUSEUM IN GREENSBORO JUST ONE OF MANY PLACES OF INTEREST IN NORTH CAROLINA’S NEW SOUTH BY EDITH BILLUPS G vonne Johnson, former mayor of Greensboro, NC, still remem- bers sitting down at the F.W. Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro on February 2, 1960 to join a protest that would ignite the way for desegregation across the South. Johnson, an 18-yearold freshman at Bennett College for Women, said that when NCA & T University students Joseph A. McNeil, Franklin E. McCain, David L. Richmond and Ezell A. Blair Jr. coura- geously sat down at the White-only counter on February 1, the word spread like wildfire throughout Greensboro’s Black community. “We met at one of the local churches and said we were all in this together. We were going to make sure things would change,” Johnson said. Johnson recalls being scared, but explained that “it did not matter. When your soul has been so suppressed, you do what you have to do.” The president of Bennett, a college for African-American women, would stand fully behind her students as they protested in shifts between classes. “Dr. Willa Player, president of Bennett, said she would give out diplomas in jail if she had to,” Johnson recently recalled. The efforts of the Greensboro Four, Johnson and others, are now permanently documented at the newly opened International Civil Rights Center and Museum at 301 North Elm Street in Greensboro. For African-Americans who want to learn first hand about the first sit- in movement in the nation, the museum takes visitors on a poignant journey through the challenges African-Americans faced in the civil rights struggle. I recently packed my bags for a five-day visit to Greensboro, Old Salem and Charlotte. I stepped into the past and learned about the rich history that brought about the emerging New South. Touring the 30,000-sq. ft. Civil Rights Museum that spans two floors, I got an up close look at educational exhibits, period artifacts and state-of-the art technology that celebrates the impact of the sit-in movement on civil and human rights issues throughout the world. The museum’s curator and program director, Bamidele Demerson, took visitors through the museum’s “Hall of Shame” that depicts hor- 34 rific images of blacks being lynched, burned alive, and hosed by firefighters. Before stepping into the hall, one can see an authentic robe worn by a member of the Klu Klux Klan. Leaving the hall, visitors can see a re-enactment of the Greensboro Four strategizing in their dorm room on the night before they would step into history books. A high- light of the tour is being able to sit at the original lunch counter where the four NCA & T Students sat with thou- sands over several months before the lunch counter was finally desegregated. According to Demerson, “It was not cherry pie or a sandwich that these young men wanted, rather they want- ed America to live out its promise that all men are creat- ed equal. What they wanted on their menu was social jus- tice. African-Americans cooked the food and Whites and Black Meetings & Tourism July/August 2010: www.blackmeetingsandtourism.com