north carolina, launching a movement that would spread to other cities. viewerracy parker takes questions about protests against segregation at that time. first, a look at 1960 greensboro from the documentary. [video clip] storen we walked into the , we wanted to prove that we were customers. we made sure to get receipts. we browsed around in the store, just trying to get some fix on where we were and what we were about to do. we mulled around in the store, just trying to get some fix on where we work and what we were about to do.

anxiety having some would not get to hire me. i felt my temperature increase. i could feel my sweat coming off the side of my face. didn't have to ask joe what he was thinking. we looked at each other and of bus looked at the counter at the same time. we just started to walk toward the counter. without a single word. that is how it happened.

.guest: thank you for having me three of them had met in high school. they had met before. they were not thinking about injustices, and how to push the movement along, but it was not until joseph mcneil is returning to school after christmas break in 1959 when he greyhound meal at a -- roof -- he is refused a meal at a greyhound terminal. iss just trying to did he emboldened. he and his four friends decide they're going to target the sit in ats and go

segregated eating facilities in greensboro, north carolina. what i find interesting is why woolworth's? and dime.s was a five many people of a certain age probably still remember. it was a chain discount department store and it was recognizable because it is a chain across the united states. replicate ad to similar movement, you could. operated aoolworth's very contradictory policy when it came to african americans. they were free to enter, browse and purchase. however they were not allowed to eat at lunch counters. they could not use beauty shops. on or returnt try clothes. they were denied credit.

they could be denied service at any moment's. woolworth's becomes a place where it's very visible for showcasing the racial discrimination of the time, of the country and for them, it could be one of the most ideal places to visibly dismantle the system of racial injustice. what was the state of segregation in 1960? we're talking six years after round versus board of education -- brown v. board of education. momentthis is a huge when the brown versus board of education decision comes down outlawing racial segregation in public schools and it overturns the 1896 but to versus ferguson decision that essentially ruled that separate but equal is

constitutional. after the plessy decision, the actual desegregation of schools is slow. extremely slow. very little is done. and then rosa parks initiates this movement, the montgomery bus boycott movement, which lasts a year. between the end of that movement and 1960, very little had changed. i think that there is -- there was a generation of students and these are a generation of students who would have been the tt tillit till -- emme till was brutally lynched and murdered. they understand when they go in the store the rules for them are different. when they go to get something to eat the lunch counter in itself

was a symbol of white supremacy. theas a symbol of how country, and the marketplace, how these stores tried to keep them in second class citizenship. guest,racy parker is our thestant professor in department of african-american studies at the university of massachusetts-amherst. we are talking about the lunch counter protests in this hour. we are joined by our friends on c-span3. all phone are split up regionally. -- our phones are split up regionally. we would love to hear from you as we go through this hour of "

washington journal." professor parker, why did this movement become the one that is pointed movement innsboro particular -- this was not the first lunch counter protest. there had been other school incidents going back to the 1940's and making 50's. why is this the one that gets pointed to? guest: they are at an historical moment. there's an energy and a desire for an media see among these young people. first we are in a moment after the second world war. the economy is prosperous. toican-americans are located urban centers. they are making more money. they are more educated. .he time is right we have emmett sell, the boycott.y bus they show us the tragedies of

the movement, the everyday realities for african-americans, but also the possibilities. i think for those young students, they were tired. they were frustrated. r know the greensboro fou mentioned they were not only motivated by the death of emmett montgomery bus boycott, but king had come to speak at their college and listening to him speak about nonviolence and the injustices of the world really motivated these young men. they were not alone. they are having this conversation at their university. there are women over at bennett college, a historically black women's college, they are having similar conversations. there's an energy. there is a conversation going on and this seems to be the moment in which to do it.

we are also at a moment where the federal government is arguably more supportive of civil rights than it had been, probably since reconstruction. throughars between 1865 1877. how long did the greensboro sit in last? how much attention to get at the time? when did it spread to other cities? is july 25. it is after woolworth's much counter lost $200,000, which would be equivalent -- lunch counter lost $200,000, which would be equivalent to maybe $2 million today. -- itecided to integrate was high school students who took over the movement. the intensity continued.

finally the manager of woolworth's decided he would have three of his black workers dress in their sunday best and sit down at the lunch counter and eat. ideally when the college students get back, business could return to normal. minutes ago you mentioned the women's college in greensboro. who is esther terry? dr. esther terry was one of the participants of the greensboro sit him. she helped organize the sit in. she was a university students. openly how shee was influenced not only by her colleagues, the other women, but also by her professor and the president of the university. there is a true support system.

so she participates and she is a resident. leader ofn to be a -- not called the necessarily being concerned about public accommodations, but about public universities. making sure that there were more black faculty. and not only that, that it populatione diverse the university will have. there she earns phd in american literature. sounds and eventually chairs department of

african-american students, which i am a proud faculty member of. host: she spoke about with anating in this oral history interview with the library of congress. it's available online in its entirety, but i want to show viewers just a clip of that interview. [video clip] very important to know that woolworth's became -- you know you could go into woolworth's. tolworth's was not closed black patronage at all. you could go to woolworth's. you could buy anything you wanted that they sold at woolworth's if you have money. you just couldn't sit down and get a sandwich at the lunch counter. youngk we might have been , because honestly i felt proud.

ever't think my mother felt -- maybe she felt proud. but that was not her main feeling. that. i have a child. mother i am going to be afraid, but i'm going to tell you i was proud to sit there. i was very, very proud. i will tell you something else. i never ever understood the hatred that came. i did not understand why they would layer at us with such hatred. i was very proud to have done that. so, esther terry and that

library of congress oral history. she talked of her mother being fearful of the danger. and you talk a little bit about the reaction to the lunch counter incidents? -- can you talk a little bit about the reaction to the lunch counter incidents? -- whenhe reaction these young men get to the lunch counter the very first day, they encounter a white waitress who tells them, we don't serve african-americans here. she calls over a black waitress, genevieve dinsdale, who quickly tells them, you are making trouble and instructs them to leave. you would assume by that statement that she was anti-protest. but i think in reality what she is is she is scared. she is scared about what could happen to these young men. she is scared about what could possibly happen to herself.

these four men receive immense support from the surrounding community. this movement was not simply at the woolworth's department store. dime.nother five and increasingly there are more -- for anyone sitting , pastors, teachers, those people participate by way of an economic boycott. together it is the sit in, the notoriety of the sit in.

boycott the economic damaging reputations that is central, that is angela groll to making a change in these places. egral to making a change in these places. professor tracy parker. we are taking your questions, your comments about the 1960 lunch counter citizens on "washington journal" and american history tv. we have that special line report sit and participants. bonnie is on that line out of miami. at on he? -- bonnie? caller: good morning. i wanted to share a memory. i was in new york city. my friends and i went into town and we came upon a large crowd

outside our very popular woolworth's. they were chanting. i signed on. i joined the chant. it was "1, 2, 3, 4, don't go into woolworth's store, 5, 6, -- woolworth's certain i knew't segregate." that something was wrong. which unfortunately i would have to reiterate today. the people who started the movement back then and succeeded with the integration of the lunch counters, we need them again today, i'm afraid. thank you so much. host: thank you. tracy parker? guest: i think that is a typical story. i think that is why the using of

is so broad, so you can connect to others and now in new yorkovement city that is an alliance with people trying to integrate these public spaces in the south. what was the core and how much involvement did national civil rights groups have? ofst: core was the congress racial equality. one of their major tactics was the sit in. they had been employing the sit in the 1940's and 1950's. they have a sense of how this , how they should take the attacks and invited them in

four supports. support is a tradition of black protest. .here's also the labor movement the labor movement had been using citizens in the 1930's, unfairy to rail against employment treatment, but also to desegregate restaurants as well. some of them were part of industrial organizations. host: you talk about training. about howan you talk they tried to prepare for that experience? -- can you talk about how they try to prepare for that experience? guest: sure. nashville, they were the

students that were the most trained. they were quite meticulous. what they would do is hold classes. this, i always use a clip in the movie "the butler." the students, i believe they are in a basement and they are practicing. they are helping each other prepare. they are going to act like a counter protester, push the chair, spit on you, call you racial epithets. it is to prepare one for what could happen. we know through various pictures, film, that what these protesters went through was frankly horrific. thrown inad coffee their faces. they were spent on. milkshakes were thrown on them.

they were violently beaten. they were arrested. they were preparing the students for the fact that it might not just be physical harm or arrest, but it could end in death. was the whole idea to hold that chair and to stay in that seat as long as possible? talk about the goal. guest: the goal was to stay nonviolent, to a here to these nonviolent principles that gandhi and martin luther king had been touting. this is important for the moment we are in. we are in a moment where television is big. we are showing students dressed in their sunday best sitting with their school books, oftentimes just trying to get their school work done. staying polite, staying nonviolent, and just taking it,

,nd what the whites look like white segregation looks like, they look barbaric. they looked angry. something as simple as these young men in women wanting a coke or a sandwich results in .rutal -- this brutality it becomes a very convincing argument that african-americans are respectable, but they are dignified, that they are human. work ofpart of the making this all very visible. by april of 1960, some 77 sites had lunch counter in's is what we are talking .bout, looking back 60 years this is on "washington journal"

and american history tv. we are also taking your phone calls, the lines of split up regionally and we also the special line for sit in resistance and their family members. kathleen. good morning. caller: good morning. sit in the lunch counter demonstration so powerful, so effective, so glorious, and -- i do not see nearly as many peaceful protest any longer. host: kathleen, why this particular form of protest? why did this affect you so much? it was socause normal. it was exactly what our society should look like. be free to go eat lunch regardless of their religion, their color, anything. that was noble. martin luther king was notable. i went to public school. we were trained on his words and

they were noble. i find so much nobility and i thought we were finding success. today's perspective, i am troubled. very troubled. host: professor parker? guest: i think the sentiments that you express a quite common. it is an interesting place we are in. i think what students are doing are picking up what is unfinished in the civil rights movement. arelieve the tactics they employing are very much the astics of the 1960's, such picket lines and really making their presence and their voice heard. and they are certainly outliers who have taken a different approach. , the coreview

sentiments the core philosophy of king and his supporters and the young men and women who participated are very much seen in the protests today. good morning. wisconsin. your next with professor parker. caller: good morning. c-span. i would put my hat off to you. i appreciate you being on bee program this morning. i am originally from the south. mississippi's is typically. specifically.ppi but my contact i want to bring up is well worth. i'm not going to go into all of historyils of my because i am in the process of trying to write my memoirs. my experience with woolworth's came when i graduated from high school in jackson, mississippi and my mom could not afford to send me to college.

my dad have left the family. i ended up in chicago with my mother's oldest sister and i ended up there because she was the only one that could afford to send me and bring me to a different location so i had an opportunity to go to school. i got a job at woolworth's. and gone tohad died heaven because there was no such thing as a young black woman working at a store of any type in mississippi. i was put on the candy counter and i worked the cashier and everything on the candy counter. that was my responsibility. i felt really important. and that's what really got me going in life. that gave me that confidence. and i think that is what is happening nowadays with all of the animosity toward the races and everything, our children are losing confidence. thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak this

morning and i hope that everything works out for everyone. host: thank you for sharing your memories. --st: what you are speaking i'm fascinated with. i lived in chicago for many years. if you are talking about the southside of chicago, i have pictures at home of the location. but what you're also speaking about is the fact that in the south, right -- the other part of discrimination -- we speak often about the discrimination against lacked consumers and black customers, but there was also discrimination against african american -- against black customers and black consumers, but the results of the discrimination against african american workers. they could not hold a job as a sales worker. these were status jobs. they gave people a sense of responsibility. that gave people a sense of confidence, as the caller mentioned.

one of the movements -- i do not have any evidence that this happened with the greensboro incident, but there are other one such is the one in charlotte, north carolina, they not only advocated on behalf of , butan-american customers also black workers and to ensure black workers could be promoted and cook an elevator operators to positions such as sales woman at the candy counter or to work in the clothing department. those were jobs that also were reflective of orchid showcase african american risk -- showcasee of order african-american respectability. and they were markers of a move fair employment and more racial equality in the marketplace. ,ost: back on the customer side

on that experience black customers had, can you talk more about trying on clothes, returning clothes, what did they face? guest: african-americans were not permitted to try on or return clothes. they were not permitted to hold credit lines. they were not permitted to use the beauty shops. they were not permitted to use the same water fountains. many of the department stores -- i think for some folks -- my students, for example, that generation, it's hard for them to remember a department store you had every amenity that could possibly think of. in department stores there were beauty shops that african-americans were not able to attend or barbershops african-american men were not allowed to use. typically while they are able to shop in places, any that white

americans believed black people could taint biologically, african-americans were not allowed to purchase a paid. -- to participate. dolores is next on that line for >> good morning. i just want to say that i went to morgan state college at the time in 1959, started as a freshman there. we demonstrated at a little shopping center down the street, we could not eat at the counter, as you said. we could buy anything we wanted there, but we could sit down at the counter and then the hecht company was a department store and we couldn't try on the clothes there. a fellow named clarence mitchell, whose uncle i think

became representative for baltimore. clarence organized us and he tructed us not to interact with any of the people that would say anything to us. we had our little signs we held up and it was a wonderful experience for me. i could cry right now just thinking about it. they eventually opened up the drugstore and the department store and we could sit down. i'm so proud of you listening to you because you are saying all the things we experienced at that time. thank you for letting me speak. host: delores, do you remember how long that protest lasted and how quickly -- you said eventually it changed, how long did that take? caller: i don't want to say because i don't exactly remember, but i know while i was

there. i was only there for a year and a half and then i transferred to virginia union in richmond. but it opened up while i was there. host: thanks for the call. perfect guest: thank you. i'm from baltimore and so the story of morgan state students doing that work, i have benefited from that. i must thank you for that. i assume you mean it was the northwood shopping center that morgan state students tried to integrate and were successful at doing so. those students were very well organized, they planned everything very well. and really, that's another protest movement that not simply leveraged picketing and sit ins but also the use of the economic boycott. host: greensboro, north carolina is next.

paul, on the line for family members of participants, good morning. caller: good morning to you. i wanted to chime in and say both my parents were graduates of north carolina a&t and my father was on the football team. those guys staged their placement within that time and it was always amazing to hear my dad tell the stories about being on the sidewalks. the anti-protesters spitting on them and yelling epithets. and as a kid him telling me those stories was amazing. i remember going to the i ended up going to the university at chapel hill. i do remember sitting there and reading my history books they were talking about the football team in woolworths and outside woolworths. i remember at the time being 18 or 19 years old and writing in

the margins of my book that it was my dad. he was a part of that team. because you seldom see that. -- because you sell those books back. i was hoping that someone down the line would see that and be inspired by it. i would also say that david richmond his son and i are good , friends. we are still friends to this day. we competed in highs will athletics. he is a great guy and a great legacy to his father. guest: that is wonderful to hear, thank you for your story. there are some wonderful images of the football players helping to protect other protesters as they were trying to leave and would circle around, particularly women, female protesters, circle around them so they could safely exit the woolworths during the protest without getting injured. i don't know if you have time

but there is some wonderful imagery with the newspapers and television. the football players are very much a part of it. host: the caller mentioned david richmond, what eventually happens to the greensboro four? do they go on to become leaders in the wider civil rights movement in the 1960's and 1970's? guest: it depends on how you're defining the movement. they all to some degree had a difficult time. after the protest, they are labeled radicals. in some ways, they were somewhat blackballed from local opportunities. david richmond remained in greensboro. i believe he ended

up becoming a janitor at a nursing home, refusing to leave north carolina because his family was there. his parents in particular. others however left greensboro and are still around, some of them went on to have strong careers in military service, joseph mcneil. ezell blair junior eventually moved to met became a teacher and counselor. he does oral histories. so in a way, these men have cap the legacy alive and have passed along their understanding of racial equality, their ideologies onto a subsequent generation of children. that has been i would argue has , been essential to how we end up at a moment like this when people are once again employing similar tactics we saw in the 1960's to advance a movement that may have gotten slightly off-track by the

1980's. host: in burke, virginia, this is sue. good morning and thank you for waiting. good morning and i want to thank c-span american history tv for having great programs like this. i have a quick question for professor parker. when she mentioned some of the protest going on for a long time, how long did it take from when it started to it ended and was it continuous? did they substitute people and what was the process? guest: the greensboro sit and begin february 1 and ends july 25. it's pretty much continuous. there is a two-week moratorium in agreement made between protesters and the city.

the idea is they would spend that two weeks trying to negotiate a plan of how to integrate these stores. that fails. that's a tactic that has been used for decades. you would often call it the use of persuasion. these backdoor meetings with management to try and create change. so that doesn't work. as a result, the protest pick up again. when the students leave for college vacation, it's local high schoolers who decide to fill their shoes and continue. so it's continuous, but it ebbs and flows. in the use of tactics and momentum going on. host: on this idea of how long it took from lunch counter sit into change coming in the area, this is from the oral history interview of gloria grenell of virginia union university. graduates who participated in sit ins in richmond from her , library of congress oral history interview. [video clip] >> i thought the world is going to change. i was so naive. i remember a police person was very nice to me.

i remember when we were arrested he held my hand and helped me up to the paddy wagon and i thought that was so nice. and my aunt called me she says i , see you on the news into the you are being helped paddy wagon. >> you mentioned there were some students that didn't participate and you were angry. >> i was angry with them because i felt they lived in virginia, they should. we went to a courthouse -- we went to jail and they put us in the cell and it was smelly and i thought not even a clean cell. and then in the court, the court was segregated. and i felt like am i in hell? ,what has happened. even the courts are segregated. then i remember a black man came in and he was -- you could smell him, he was a drunkard. and i thought why do the dredges have to come in.

and i am thinking it's going , downhill fast. and i thought, am i losing my mind? you know? horrible. but i just thought ok now that we've sat in, we have these attorneys and they are going -- and everything is going to be right. you can change laws, but you can't change people. that comes about through your doing individually. grinnell from her library of congress interview from what she remembered. host: traci parker on what she remembered. guest: she is right. i think there is for some protesters there was this notion this would happen and there would be immediate change. but in reality, there had to be some sort of consistent pressure on local governments to ensure

-- and on merchants, to ensure that they held their word. so while sit ins may have ended meant, places, what that however was that african-american groups, core, whether it was sclc, the southern christian leadership conference the naacp, sncc, the student nonviolent coordinating committee, these students are doing constant check ins with businesses to ensure that they are following the new rules, to ensure a democracy of equality is being actually practiced in these places. and the difficulty of a sit in movement is you could target one store and that one store could integrate. that doesn't mean that the store next door will integrate. butnext door will integrate. lots of times however businesses

would say woolworths integrated, i don't want to be next, i saw what happened to them so i will just go ahead and quietly integrate. but it's a movement it's difficult because a constant. there is no true uniformity or umbrella organization. even with woolworths. woolworths was a chain and their philosophy was from their corporate headquarters was that we followed the customs of the local customs at the location in which our stores occupy. so the racial politics and practices of the woolworths in greensboro could be drastically different than one that is in richmond, for example. host: jacqueline's next out of new orleans. good morning. caller: good morning. how are you and professor parker this morning? host: doing well.

what is your question or comment. caller: ok. i think it's more like two statements that i have. i will try to be as fast as i can. i want to mention that my mother in the 1960's had a job at the waltons on canal street, that was our mall. the store name was dh holmes, like a dillards today or macy's. those are the main two expensive stores. my mother got a job there and my mother worked there for a few days and the weekend came. when she went to work that monday, the person that hired her said i thought i saw you and she said yes and she asked her where and said that was me, she said it couldn't be you because the man you are walking with was a black man. and my mom said, that's my husband. my mother was not a white lady but she was very bright skinned because she was not a white lady and they thought she was white, they fired her immediately for that.

so, when you talk about woolworths employing black people, i understand that. say, when wanted to people did boycotts, like rosa parks and woolworths. when they stop spending their monday, that is what made people change their minds. they do not change their hearts. because the dollar wasn't coming in but it's sad you have to hurt a person in their pocket before they have a change of reaction. i want the people to really think about that. we should not have to boycott and not spend our money for you to change your policies. i want to say thank you. in these last three months, i'm 55 years old, i have learned more about black history than ever. the schools are not teaching it and i hope and pray this will get to the united states government. we need to have black history in every school in the united states of america. it should be mandatory.

thank you for your time and god bless you and i appreciate c-span for allowing us to say what we need to say. host: professor parker. guest: thank you. you are right, the story about being fired after an employer learning that one is in fact black was actually quite common. it is something that started as early as department stores. in my family there was a story, a great aunt who was very fair and had gotten a job in downtown baltimore. but it was well known that when her daughter might see her on the street, her daughter could not speak to her because if her employer found out that she was a black woman, she would be fired. and so that is quite common. it's so disappointing. with regards to businesses and

governments making change, and usually that change comes from because their pockets are hurt, that is the truth of the matter. very few times are you seeing businesses change because of humanitarian efforts. even as early as the 1940's and 1950's, the quakers, the american friends service committee, was going around throughout the country in large cities, doing surveys with customers as their -- they are walking out of the store. and they would ask would you be bothered if a black person with your salesperson when you made a purchase and overwhelmingly these white customers would say i would not be bothered. i'm really only in there for the goods that i need. i would tolerate it, it would be fine. i wouldn't find a new store to shop in. and still, managers and

retailers and business owners were so fearful of alienating their desired clientele, white and middle upper classes that they still refused to do so. host: about 15 minutes left with traci parker. working in the department of afro-american studies at the university of massachusetts amherst. considering your post there, i want to know your thoughts on the comments about schools not teaching black history. guest: i agree. the problem is, the problem to my mind is that teaching history in middle school and high school is a political project. we are teaching students to be citizens in the ways in which larger forces want us to understand citizenship. and as a result, african-american students

learn that they are second-class citizens. it's not until they get to it's not until they get to colleges and universities, it so important why we need ethnic studies departments, women and gender sexuality departments. because i hear overwhelmingly when i teach my classes on the history of civil rights or the history of black women that they -- students are craving the information. this is statements made by not only by black students, but white students, latino and asian students, they are craving to know this history and they are able to see how important it is for this moment. i'm teaching an online civil rights course right now and we were having a discussion, and the connections they are making between what happened in the sit in movement or what happened in birmingham and making these parallels between what's going on right now.

in all honesty, a lot of the students, they were in awe. they were impressed, but they were also encouraged and motivated to do something, to change the racial politics of our country. host: if that craving is there, why can't schools in the country bring we were talking about down two at least the high school level? guest: that's a good question. i don't work with high schoolers, so i don't know. there's probably a variety, of reasons. probably issues of funding, the issue of feeling like you are teaching to a test system. and there is also i'm sure a latent desire just to not teach it. but it would be, i do think, that if students have a stronger

understanding about where everyone in this country has come from, to understand the diverse backgrounds in this country, to understand the influence of slavery and the legacy of slavery in this country, to understand the history of black protest in this country and the influence of black protests on other movements such as the lgbtqia movement, such as the women's movement, that native americans have their own freedom movement and have one. continue to have one. that this is really important. understanding who we are as citizens. host: this is ellen waiting on the line for sitting participants. good morning. caller: good morning. your guest mentioned she was active in baltimore and a just wanted -- that brought back a memory to me, i was very active, in a group from goucher college.

we were a group of white students combined with a group of students i believe from morgan state. and we were in the civic interest group and did some sit ins in baltimore under very hostile conditions. so i just wanted to add that to the mix here and i believe it was clarence mitchell, i think he later went on and became a politician. two things remain with me. when i was on these picket lines, a white man came up to me, and i'm white, and he said to me with great hatred, i would rather see my daughter dead than on a picket line. i think up to that point i hadn't realized the emotional dimension of what we were attempting there. and this can thing was, we were

arrested. we were put in a police van and taken to a very wild and bumpy ride through baltimore and when the freddie gray case came up, that really rang a bell. that they had done the same thing, they had sped up and knocked him around because the same thing happened to us. and this was in 1960. i wanted to share this. host: thank you for the call in and for the memories. professor parker. guest: thank you for that comment. what you are also pointing out, is the interracial nature of these protests. i mentioned it was a youth movement. it was intergenerational with if you think about it, the generation of emmett till, but also his mother's generation, mimi bradley and ella baker. it is also the fact that the sit ins had white supporters many of whom were

, white college students. these were white members of religious communities . many times you had white students coming from the north. increasingly after to help out 1962, with voter registration to , help out with accommodations, to help out with the education of african-american southerners, it's quite important and i love this story, when the four men sat down at the lunch counter, on the very first day. and they are getting these looks from onlookers of white people sitting at the counter and they are fearful they might be physically harmed or killed, an elderly white woman came up and put her arm on his shoulder and said that she was so proud and that she had wished something like this have been done 10 years prior. so the amount of white support

comes in a variety of ways. it's not simply the white college students who come in the case of greensboro and coming from the women's college that unc or in the case of jackson, the jackson sit in, in 1963, reverend ed king who was a white chaplain. participating and sat alongside and moody during the jackson sit in. white support was coming from a variety of places. in the montgomery bus boycotts you have white female employers driving their domestics to work because the black domestic wasn't taking the bus out of protest. so the interracial nature of , in the 1960's is very important. and i think again it is really important to the movement

going on now, the diversity of the protesters. host: as we get closer to 10:00 a.m. eastern, we want to ask you what happened to that woolworth's and that lunch counter? what stands there today? guest: most have closed down throughout the country but that woolworths is now a museum, you can go and they do, it's fabulous. it is very multimedia. there are some actors of some sort who detail what happened at the lunch counter sit ins. so it's definitely worth going. i have not been in some time i will say a couple of the lunch counter stools are in the smithsonian out in washington, d.c., if you're interested in

the africanas well, american history museum. host: time for one or two more calls. caller: kansas city, kansas. in june, 1960, there were four females and two males who participated in a city in not at woolworths but at a restaurant. the same year when the naacp sent out a call to picket in front of woolworths, to protest what they were doing. we were in free kansas. that is where we got involved. this really touched off the civil rights movement in kansas city, kansas. i might add that in 1952, i was on my way to korea. i had been sent to korea. on my way. in kansas city, kansas,

which was as segregated as birmingham, alabama or greensboro, north carolina. i went to the store, kress, which was a store very similar to woolworths. they had a counter but african americans had to sit in the back. i sat in in 1952 on my way to korea. i figured if i could dying korea, i could die kansas city, kansas. the kansas city branch of woolworth's refused -- it really touched on the civil rights movement. kansas city, kansas became the laughing stock of america as far as the naacp was concerned. and that's where some of the people who had sat on the sidelines got involved and we started working on the department stores because they would not hire blacks. and i would share with the committee, have all the documents and everything. but even today, persons in kansas

city, kansas, but the black and white community, do not like to be reminded. because only a handful of us really got involved in kansas city, kansas. haywood,, frances lives in california now. and she is still very active in the civil rights movement. host: that is chester in kansas city, kansas. parker? sure ii'm going to make got this correctly because my earpiece is going out a little bit. from what i understand is that there was the naacp was reluctant to participate in a protest against woolworth, does that sound right? that is not surprising. and i believe he was talking about in the early 1950's. is that correct? host: yes. guest: the naacp agenda in the 1950's was to take a more litigation approach.

hence why there's brown v. board of education and several other cases around the integration of schools. they were reluctant to do anything that would involve direct confrontation. they sort of jump on the bandwagon or become more comfortable with it, by the time they get to the student sit in movement, in part because they see how effective it is. king himself even articulated as the effectiveness of doing sit ins and direct confrontations, as long as it was nonviolent. but at that time in the 50's in the midst of the cold war, the naacp felt as though they didn't want to make any missteps whereby they might be labeled a communist. their real goal and their real agenda at that time was to approach civil rights through the courts.

i want to give it to you to answer the question, the legacy of those sit-ins of 1960? guest: the sit-ins continue into the 1960's. they were employed in different ways. time you get to the mid 60's, late 60's, in washington, d.c. and maryland, we see sit-ins used in conjunction with economic boycott to racially integrate workplaces, to ensure that african-americans can be hired in skilled positions. i feel strongly that the sit-in movement really helped facilitate the creation and implementation of the civil rights act of 1964. title ii of which outlaws discrimination of public

accommodation. despite these major legal moments, brown v. board of education being one of them, public accommodations are one of the most integrated places in america today. schools and housing remain quite segregated. a lot can be said about the success and longevity of that success when it comes to public accommodations and the efforts of those sit-ins. host: traci parker. assistant professor at the university of massachusetts amherst. we appreciate your time this morning. guest: thank you. announcer: you are watching american history tv all begin every weekend on c-span three. to join the conversation, like us on facebook. interviewral history with esther terry who talks

about participating in the lunch aunter sitting protests while student college in greensboro, north carolina. she served as president of bennett college in 2012 and 2013. this interview is part of an oral history project on the civil rights movement of the mid-20th century initiated by congress in 2009, conducted by the smithsonian national museum of african american history and culture, the american folklife center at the library of congress, and the southern oral history program at the university of north carolina chapel hill.