university of massachusetts amherst professor. that is live in a moment here on c-span 3. first, a look at events . . >>,.

>>,. >>,. we decided to walk to the counter and without a single word that is how it happened. but >> we took a seat. >> university professor speaks to us about the lunch counter sit in. so who were the greensboro for and why did they decide to sit down at that counter and that

february day in 1960. >> -- thank you for having me those were four young men who are college freshman, at north carolina at the state university. three of them had already met in high school. so they already had a report, they met the fourth as a freshman in college. so actually when thinking about racial injustice is they'd think about that how to integrate how to push the movement along for sometime now but it wasn't until, joseph mcneil is returning to school after christmas break in 1959, when he refused to neil, and train terminal. he was trying to buy a hotdog. and he gets back to campus, and he is emboldened. he says enough is enough. so him in his four friends, decide that they are going to

target the wool worse, and go have a seat in. what i found interesting, is why will worse? well worse was a five and dime store, that many people of a certain age still remember it was a chain discount department store. and it was recognizable because it was a chain across the united states and so there is a way in which you can recognize and see yourself and if you wanted to replicate a similar movement you could. but also will worse like many department stores at the time, operated a very contradictory policy when it came to african americans. they were free to enter brows and purchase, however they were not allowed to eat at the lunch cower or lunch counter or other facilities they couldn't try on a return close, they were

denied credit they could be provided and even our unequal service at any moment. and will worth becomes a place that is very visible for showcasing the way through discrimination and segregation at the time, and it also then for them could be one of the most ideal places to dismantle the system of racial injustice. >> what was the segregation you know we are talking six years after the board of education what was it like in retail and shopping. >> so in 1954 you know there is a huge moment when the brown versus the board of education decision comes down, out out basically it overturns the 1896 decision, that had stipulated

that a separate school was constitutional. after the decision, the desegregation of schools was slow. extremely slow. very little was done. yes we have in december of 1955, rosa parks between the end of that movement, in 1956, to 1960 very little had changed. and i think, there was a generation of, students and these are generation of students, you know when emmett till was beautifully what was terribly lynched. so when they were watching the montgomery bus boycott, and emmett till being lynched, you

don't so when they want to get something to eat, and a lunch counter it self was a symbol of racism. it was a symbol of how the country you know how stores and how among marketplace, showed lacks a second class citizens. feel >> she is a assistant professor, at the university of massachusetts amherst. we are talking about the protests in the 1960s in greensboro. and we are being joined by our friends at american history tv. we are inviting you to join the conversation if you are in the eastern or central time zones you can call us. we have a separate line for sit-in participants, so if you are a member of those days, of those citizens, but seven for eight 8002 we would love to

hear from you as we go about this hour, you know professor parker, why did this movement become the one, that gets pointed to. the greensboro protests in particular, why is the one you know this wasn't the first lunch counter protest, there had been other sittings that had happened going back to the forties and fifties so why is this is one gets pointed to? >> i guess they're in a historical moment, and there is an energy and sort of desire you know first were in a moment, after second world war, and african americans have now been located to urban centers they're making more money they're educated and so the time is right and then we have the emmett till, the montgomery

busboy. they show us the tragedies of the movement. the everyday realities for african americans. but also the possibility. and i think for those young students they were tired. they were frustrated. i know that the games were all for the greensboro for mention that they were not only motivated by emmett till. also the bus from least from rosa parks. but listening to them speak also partner king, about non violence and about the injustices of the world really motivated these young men and so while they are having this conversation at their university the women over bennett college which is a black women's college they are having similar conversations because there is an energy and a conversation going on and

this seems to be the moment in which to do it. talk about a moment where the federal government is arguably more supportive of civil rights than it has been probably since since the reconstruction the years between 1855 and 1877. >> how long did the greensboro citizen last, and how did it start spreading to other cities? >> so it lasted six months, and ended july 25th. it ends after the lunch counter had lost about 200,000 dollars which would be equivalent to maybe two billion today they decide to integrate while the college students are on summer break. it was when they had left the college students on summer

break it was the high school students who took over and it continued and finally the manager of well worth said he was going to have three of his black workers dressed in their sunday best and sit down at lunch counter and so by the time the college students get back, things you know business could return to normal. >> i mean ago you mentioned the woman's college, in greensboro and who is esther -- . >> doctor esther -- she helped organize sit in and she was a university student at the college and she speaks quite openly about how she was influenced not only by her colleagues the other women, after college but also by her professor and by the president of the university.

and it's through encouragement they participated in this and she participated and, she was actually arrested at 1.1 but she's gone to be a leader of what historians called the second student movement. whereby students were not concerned about public accommodations, but about integrating university, making sure that there was more black students in college, that there was more black faculty, and not only that but the curriculum reflects the diverse population that they are hoping these universities will have. so she will to massachusetts, after getting her degree in south carolina, and there she earns a ph.d. in american literature, and helps chairs,

the faculty of america african american studies, which i'm a member of, and she helped found one of the first black studies program in the united states. >> places where they have talked about her, participating in there is an oral history interview, and it's available online. it it's entirety. but just a clip i want to show them just clip of that interview. >> i think it's important to know that, will worse became you know you know you could go into a worse, it was not closed to black patronage is all. you could go into a worse you could buy anything the you want but you couldn't down to get a sandwich at the lunch counter you can see down there to eat

and i think we might have been you know i feel proud honestly. i don't think my mother, ever felt proud like that, but i think she was more terrified. i know that now because i have a child i think as a mother i would be afraid but i was a proud to sit there. i was very very proud i will tell you something else, i never ever understood the hatred that came it was absolutely surprising because i did not understand why people would glared us with such hatred. that was a little unnerving. >> but i was basically very

proud to have done that. >> esther terry. traci parker, she talked about her mother being fearful of the danger she was in. could you talk about the reaction to the lunch counter sit in. >> the reaction is mixed. when these men first get to the lunch counter on the very first day, they encounter a white waitress who tells them that we don't serve african-americans here. that white righteous -- waitress gets frazzled, so she calls over a black waitress who quickly tells them that you are making trouble and instructs them to leave. you would assume by that statement that perhaps she was anti-protest. but i think in reality what she

is, she is scared. she is scared of what could happen to these young men, she is scared of what could possibly happen to herself. so you see that type of sentiment going on, but increasingly as the movement goes on, these four men, this movement itself, receives immense support from the surrounding community, from the black community. if they were not sitting in at the lunch counters -- i should say that this movement was not simply at the woolworths department store. it eventually spread to cress and company, another five and dime. for those who aren't sitting in, it may have been the parents who may have been their pastors, their teachers, those folks participate in the way of an economic boycott. what they are doing is, holding their dollars from these stores until the stores make substantial change. together it is the sit in, it is the notoriety that is being televised and reported, and it

is the economic war, that is damaging store profits and reputations that is central, integral to making change in these places. >> professor traci parker as our guest this morning with the university of massachusetts amherst. should also note, her book, "department stores and the black freedom movement, ." >> this hour of the washington journal and american history tv. we have that special line for sit-in participants and family members. bonnie is on that line >> good morning. i wanted to share with you a very vivid memory from when i was 14 years old. i was living in new york city. my friends and i had gone into

town to see movies and shop and we came upon a large crowd outside a very popular woolworths. they were chanting, and immediately i signed on, joined the chant. it was 1, 2, 3, 4, don't go into woolworths store. southern woolworths segregate. at that young age i immediately knew, as a white girl, this was wrong. there was something wrong with our country, which unfortunately i would have to reiterate today. the certain people who started the movement back then and succeeded, of course, with the integration of the lunch counters, we need them again today. you so much. >> thanks for the memory. traci parker? >> i think that is a typical story.

this is why using a woolworths is so important. that you could have such a broad reach from not simply the one woolworths you are protesting against, but also it could connect to others. now you have a movement in new york city that is supportive, that is an alliance with those trying to integrate these public spaces in the south. >> these sit in's? >> the core with the congress of racial equality. it was founded in chicago and one of their major tactics was the sit in. they have been employing the sit in. when the greensboro sit in began, it was local naacp members called the court. with a sense of how you train students to take the attacks,

to stay nonviolent, to stay strong, and invited them in for support. what core is also building on is a tradition of black protests in the community. they are drawing not only on black history, but also the labor movement. the labor movement had been using sit ins in the 1930's not only to rail against unequal, unfair employment treatment, but also to desegregate restaurants as well. some of them are part of the congress of industrial organizations, the cio. >> you talk about training. could you talk about how that worked and what people who are going to sit down at these lunch counters, how they try to prepare? >> i think nashville is arguably one of the most -- the

students there were the most trained. they were quite meticulous in their preparation for the sit in and what they would do is hold classes. when i teach the sit in movement and my civil rights class, there is a clip in the movie "the butler, " where the students are in a basement and they are practicing, they are helping each other prepare. you have someone sitting in a chair and a friend of yours is going to act like they are a counterprotesters. and pushed the chair, spit on you, call you racial epithets. it is to prepare one for what could happen, right? we know that from various pictures, from film, from television news reels that what these protesters went through was, frankly horrific. we have students who had hot coffee thrown in their faces. they were spit 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 be physical harm or arrest. it could end in death. >> was the idea to not react and continue the tradition of nonviolent protest? was the idea to hold that chair and stay in that seat for as long as possible? talk to the goals a little bit when it came to that training. >> the goal was to stay nonviolent. to adhere to these nonviolent principles that gandhi and martin luther king had been touting. because -- again, this is important what moment we are in. we are in a moment in which television is big. we are showing students who are just in their sunday best. with their schoolbooks, often times, simply trying to get their schoolwork done.

staying polite, staying nonviolent, and just taking it. then what the white segregationist look like, they look barbaric. they look angry. they look -- something as simple as these young men and women wanting a coke or sandwich results in this brutality. it becomes a very convincing argument that african-americans are in fact first-class citizens. that they are respectable. that they are dignified. that they are human. that is the work of doing, making this all very visible. >> february 1, the date greensboro lunch counter protest began. by april 1960, some 77 cities had lunch counter sit ins. that is what we are talking about. those lunch counterprotests in this hour of "washington journal also taking your calls

on lines split up regionally. this is kathleen out of california. good, you are next. >> thank you. i am 68 years old. this is my history as well. i found the lunch counter demonstration so moving, so powerful, so effective, so glorious. honestly, from my perspective i wonder about the movement. i don't see nearly as many peaceful protests any longer. >> protest in particular? why does it affect you so much? >> because it was so noble. >> because it was so noble. it is exactly what our society should look like. people should eat lunch regardless of their religion or anything. martin luther king was noble. when i went to public school,

who were trained on his words and he was noble. i find so much nobility. i thought we were finding success. from today's perspective, i'm troubled, very troubled. >> professor parker? >> i think the sentiments that you express are quite common. it is an interesting place we are in. i think what students are doing now are picking up on what was unfinished. of the civil rights movement. the tactics they are employing are very much those of the 1960's, those of the students. such as picket lines and sit ins. and really making their presence and voice heard. there are certainly outliers who have taken a different approach. in my view, the core sentiments,

the core philosophy of king and his supporters, and even of the young men and women participated in lunch counter sit ins, i very much see in protests today. >> wisconsin. you are next. >> good morning and thanks for c-span. traci parker, if i wore a hat, my hat will be off to you. i appreciate your being on the program this morning. i am originally from the south, i'm from mississippi specifically. my contact that i want to bring up is woolworths. i'm not going into all of the details about my history, because i'm in the process of trying to write my memoirs.

my experience at woolworth came when i graduated from high school in jackson, mississippi and my mom cannot afford to send me to college. my dad had left the family. i ended up in chicago with my mother's older sister. i ended up there because she was the only one who could afford to send for me and bring me to a different location so i could have an opportunity to go to school. i got a job at woolworths. i thought i had died and gone to heaven. there was no such thing as a black woman working in the store of any type in mississippi. i was put on the candy counter and i worked the cashier and everything on the candy counter was my responsibility. i felt really important. that is what really got been going. giving me that confidence. i think that is what is happening nowadays with all of the animosity toward the races and all. our children are losing confidence.

thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak this morning. i hope everything works out for everyone. >> memory. professor parker? >> i'm fascinated by this. i lived in chicago for many years. if you are talking about the woolworth on the south side of chicago, i have pictures at home. what you are also speaking about is the fact that in the south, the other part of discrimination, we speak often about the discrimination against black consumers, but there was also discrimination against african-american workers. at woolworths in the south, an african-american could not hold a job as a sales worker or as a clerical worker. these were jobs reserved for women. these were status jobs, jobs that gave people a sense of responsibility, they gave people a sense of confidence, as the caller mentioned.

so, some sit-in movements -- and i don't have any evidence that happened with the greensboro sit-in -- but there are others such as the one in charlotte, they not only advocated on behalf of african-american customers and the discrimination they faced, but also black workers. to ensure black workers eventually be promoted from janitor and cook and maid's and elevator operators to positions such as a saleswoman at the candy counter or to work in the clothing department. those were jobs that also were reflective of or could showcase african-americans'respectabilit- y, their intellect. they were markers of a move

towards fair employment, and more racial equality in the marketplace. >> back on the customer side, on that experience that black customers had in 1960, as you talk more about rules regarding trying on clothes or returning clothes? what did they face? >> african-americans were not permitted to try on or return clothes. there were not permitted to use the beauty shops. they were not permitted to use the same water fountains. many stores, i think for some folks -- to my students, for example, it is hard for them to remember a department store that had every amenity that you can possibly think of. in department stores there were beauty shops that african-american women were not allowed to attend or barbershops that african-american men were not allowed to use. typically what is going on is that while they are able to

shop in places, any place white americans believed that black people could taint biologically, african-americans were not allowed to participate. >> line for sit-in participants. good morning. >> good morning. >> go ahead, dolores. >> i just wanted to say that i went to morgan state college, it was called college at the time in 1950 actually 1959. i started as a freshman there. we demonstrated at a shopping center down the street. we couldn't eat at the counter, as you said we could buy anything but we could not sit down at the counter. the company was a department store. we couldn't try on the clothes

there. a fellow named clarence mitchell, whose uncle became representative from baltimore, clarence organized us. he instructed us not to interact with any of the people that would say anything to us. we had our signs that we held up. it was a wonderful experience for me. i could cry right now just thinking about it. they eventually opened up that we could sit down and the department store. i'm so proud of you because you are saying all of the things we experienced at that time. i think you for letting me

speak >> how long did that take? >> i don't want to say, because i don't exactly remember. but i know that while i was there, and i was only there for a year and a half and then i transferred to virginia union, but it opened up while i was there. >> thanks for the call. >> i'm from baltimore, so the story of morgan state students doingthat work, i have benefited from that. so i must thank you for that. i am assuming you are meaning the northwood shopping center that morgan state students had tried to integrate and were successful at doing so. those students were well organized. they planned everything very well. and that is another protest movement that not simply leveraged picketing and sit ins, but also the use of the economic boycott.

>> north carolina up next. paul. >> good morning to you. i just wanted to chime in and say that, both my parents were graduates of north carolina and my father in particular was on the football team. those guys staged their placement within that time period and it was always amazing to me to hear my dad tell the stories about being on the sidewalks and the anti-protesters spitting on them and yelling, yelling epithets. he was amazing and i do

remember it. i ended up going to the university of north carolina chapel hill. i do remember that reading in my history book, they were talking about the football team in woolworths. i remember at the time being 19 years old and writing in the margins of the book that this was my dad. you sell those books back and i was hoping somewhere down the line someone would see that and be inspired. i would also say that david richmond, his sun and i are good friends. we competed against each other in high school athletics. he is a great guy and a great legacy to his father. >> that's 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 they would circle around, particularly female protesters, circle around them so they

could safely exit the woolworths without getting injured. i don't know whether you have time, but there are some wonderful imagery that was used in newspapers and on television. the football players were very much a part of that movement. >> the caller mentioned david richmond. what eventually happens with the greensboro four? do they go on to become leaders in the wider civil rights movement? >> it depends on how you are defining the movement. they all to some degree had a difficult time. after the protest, they are labeled radicals. in some ways, they are somewhat like black balled from local opportunities. david richmond ended up becoming a janitor at ak

home, refusing to leave north carolina because his family was there. his parents in particular, his children. others however left greensboro and are still around. some of them have gone on to have strong careers in military service, that would've been joseph mcneil. there is another -- i'm,

1980's. >> virginia, this is sue. >> morning. i want to thank american history tv for having such great programs like this. i have a question for professor parker. when she mentioned the protest going on for a long period of time, how long did it take from when it started to it ended? was it continuous? did they sub in people? >> the greensboro sit in began february 1, it ended july 25. it is continuous. there is a two-week moratorium. this is an agreement made between protesters and the city. the idea is that they would spend that two weeks trying to negotiate a plan of action.

how to integrate these stores. that fails. that is a tactic that has been used for decades, we often call it the use of persuasion. these backdoor meetings with management to try to create change. that doesn't work, and as a result the protests pick up again. when the students leave for college vacation, it is local high schoolers who decide to fill their shoes. and so, it is continuous but it ebbs and flows in different ways in the use of tactics and momentum. >> on this idea of how long it took from lunch counter sit into change coming in for an area, not greensboro, but this is from an oral history interview from a graduate who participated in some of the sit

ins that happened in richmond. from her library of congress oral history interview. >> i thought the world was going to change. i was so naive. the police person was very nice to me. when we were arrested, he held my hand and helped me up into the paddy wagon. i thought that was so nice. my aunt called me, she says i see you on the news being helping to the paddy wagon. >> you said some students didn't participate. >> i was angry with them, because they lived in virginia. when we got arrested we went to a courthouse -- i'm sorry, went to jail. they put us in this cell and it was smelly. i thought, not even a clean sell. the court was segregated.

i thought, am i in hell? a drunker came in. and i thought why did the judges have to come in? it is going downhill fast. i thought, am i losing my mind? horrible. but i just thought, ok, now that we have sat in, we have these attorneys and everything is going to be right and is not going to be any longer. but you can change laws, but you can't change people. that comes about through your doing, individually. >> interview. remembered. >> she's right. i think that there is, or some

protesters there was this notion that this would happen and they would be immediate change. but in reality, there has to be some sort of consistent pressure on merchants, on governments to ensure that they held their word. while citizens may have ended in some places for the sit ins, what that meant however was that african-american movement groups, the core, whether it was the southern christian leadership conference, the naacp, or even something else, these students are doing constant check ins with businesses to ensure that they are following the new rules. to ensure that a democracy of

equality is being practiced. the difficulty too is that you could target one store and that one store could integrate, but that doesn't mean the store next door is going to integrate. often times visited -- businesses would say woolworths integrated, i don't want to be next so i will quietly integrate. it is a movement that is difficult because it is a constant -- there is no true uniformity or an umbrella organization, even with woolworths. woolworths was the chain and their philosophy was from their corporate headquarters, and we follow the customs of the location in which they occupy. the racial politics, racial practices in greensboro could be drastically different then

one that was in richmond, for example. >> new orleans. >> good morning. how are you? >> doing well. it is your question or comment? >> i think it is more like two statements. i have several but i'm going to try to be as fast as i can. i want to mention to you that my mother had a job in the waltons on canal street in the 60's. the store name was dh holmes. it is like at dillards today. my mother got a job there and my mother worked for a very few days and it was a weekend and when she went to work that monday the person that hired her says, i thought i saw you? he asked and said, it couldn't

have been you because the man you are walking with was a black man. my mom said that was my husband. my mother was not a white lady but she is very light. they fired her immediately. when you talk about woolworths employing black people, i understand that. i also wanted to know, when people did boycotts, when they stopped spending their money, that is what made those people change their minds. they didn't change their hearts, because the dollars was not coming in. it is sad you have to hurt a person in their pocket before they have a change of reaction. i want people to really think about that. we should not have to boycott and not spend our money for you to change your policies. i just want to say thank you and these last three months, i am 55 years old, i have learned more about black history ever. the schools are not teaching it and i hope and pray that this will get throughto 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. i appreciate c-span for allowing us to say what we need to say. >> thanks. professor parker? >> thank you. you are right, the story about being fired after an employer learning that one is black was actually quite common. this is something that started as early as when department stores were in business. in my family there was a story where there is a great aunt who was very fair and had gotten a job in downtown baltimore. 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 she was in fact a black woman, she would be fired. so that is actually quite

common. it is so disappointing. with regards to businesses and governments making change, usually that change comes from because their pockets are hurt, that is the truth of the matter. very few times the seeing of businesses changing because of humanitarian efforts. even as early as the 1940's, 1950's, the quakers, the american friends service committee was going around throughout the country in large cities doing surveys of customers as they were walking out the store. they would do these surveys with white customers and asked,

would you be bothered if a black person was your salesperson when you made your purchase? overwhelmingly these white customers would say, i wouldn't be bothered. i'm really only in their for the goods i need. i would tolerate it, it would be fine. i wouldn't find a new store to shop in. still, managers, business owners were so fearful of alienating their desired clientele, the white and middle upper classes, that they still refused to do so. >> about 15 minutes left with professor traci parker, author of "department stores and the black freedom movement." considering your post at the university, i wonder your position on schools not teaching black history? >> the

problem is ... the problem to my mind is that teaching history in middle school and high schools is a political project. what we are teaching students is to be citizens in the ways in which larger forces want us to understand citizenship. as a result, what african-american students learn is that they are second-class citizens. it is not until they get to colleges, universities -- again, this is so important why we need african-american studies departments, women and gender and sexuality departments. i hear overwhelmingly when i teach my class on the history of the civil rights movement that students are craving for this information. this is statements made by not only black students, but white students, by my latino and asian students, that they are

craving to know this history and they are able to see how important this history is for this moment. i'm teaching an online civil rights class right now and we were having a discussion and the connections the students are making between what happened in the sit-in movement or what happened in birmingham in 1963 and making these parallels to what is going on right now -- in all honesty, a lot of the students were so in awe. they were impressed, but they were also encouraged and motivated to take part and do something to change the racial politics of our country. >> if that craving is there why not in high school level? >> that's a good question. i don't work with high

schoolers, i don't know. i suspect that there is probably a variety of reasons. this is probably issues of funding, this is probably the issue of feeling like you are teaching to a test system. three is also a blatant desire not to teach it. 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, to understand the influence of slavery and the legacy of slavery in this country, to understand the history of black protests in this country, and the influence of lack protests black protest on other movements such as the lgbtq movement, such as the women's movement, that native americans had their own freedom movement and continue to have one, that this is important for understanding who we are as citizens. >> brooklyn, new york. this is ellen. good morning. >> good morning.

your guest mentioned she was active in baltimore. 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 the group of students from oregon state. we were in the civic interest group and did some sit ins in baltimore. under hostile conditions. -- under very hostile conditions. i wanted to add that to the mix and i believe it was clarence mitchell who, i don't know if that name is familiar to you, i think he later went on and become a politician. two things remain with me. and when i was on these picket lines, a white man came up to me and he said to me with great hatred, i'd 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. the second thing was, we were arrested. we were put into a police van and taken for a wild and bumpy ride through baltimore. when the freddie gray case came up, that rang a bell. they they had done the same thing. they had speeded up and knocked him around because the same thing happened to us. this was in 1960. i just wanted to share this. >> the memories. professor parker? >> 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, i also mentioned it was intergenerational with, if you think about it is the generation of emmett till, but it is also his mother's generation. there is also the fact that the citizens had white supporters. many of whom were white college students. these were white numbers of religious communities. many times you had white college students coming down from the north. increasingly after 1960. to help out with voter registration, to help out with desegregation, to help out with the education of african-american southerners. it is quite important. and i love the story, so i'm going to be really brief, but when the four men sat down at the lunch counter on that very first day and they are getting these looks from onlookers of white people sitting at the counter and they are fearful that they might be physically harmed or killed, an elderly white woman came up to one of them and put her arm on his shoulder and said that she was

so proud of them and that she had wished something like this had been done 10 years prior. the amount of white support comes in a variety of ways. it is not simply white college students who come in the case of greensboro. they are coming from the women's college at unc or in the case of jackson, the jackson sit-in of 1963, reverend ed king, a white college student participated and sat alongside moody. white support was coming from a variety of places. in the montgomery bus boycott you had white female employers driving their domestics to work because their black domestic was not taking the bus out of protest. the interracial nature of this movement in the 1960's is very important. i think it is really important

to the movement that is going on right now. the diversity of the protesters out there. >> what happened to that lunch counter? the woolworth on in greensboro? >> woolworths has closed down throughout the country, that woolworths is now a museum. it's fabulous. it is very multimedia. there are some actors of some sort who detail what happened at the lunch counter sit ins. i haven't been in some time, but it is definitely worth seeing. i will say, a couple of the lunch counter stools are in the smithsonian. the black history museum in

washington, d.c., if you are interested in seeing that. time for one or two more calls. >> kansas city, kansas. good morning. in june 1960 there were four females and two males who participated in a sit in. -- not at a woolworths, but at another restaurant. and the naacp sent out a call to protest what they were doing, we are in free kansas and that

is where we got involved. it touched on the civil rights movement in kansas city, kansas. in 1952, i'm 87 years old, i was on my way to korea. i had been sent to korea. in the kansas city, kansas, which was as segregated as birmingham or greensboro, i went to a store which was a store similar to woolworths. they had a counter, but african-americans had to sit in the back. i figured if i could die in korea, i could die in kansas city, kansas. in kansas city, kansas, woolworths, the branch refused to picket in front of woolworths, which really touched off the civil rights movement. kansas city became the laughingstock as far as the naacp was concerned. some of the people that sat on the sidelines got involved. we started working on the department stores because they

would not hire blacks. the committee had all of the documents, but even today persons in kansas city, kansas do not like to be reminded, because there was only a handful of us got involved here. i might emphasize this. the people, my sister was named francis haywood, who lived in california. it is still very active in the civil rights movement. >> city, kansas. traci parker? >> i'm going to make sure i got this correctly. earpieces going out a little bit. from what i understand, local naacp was reluctant to participate in a protest movement against what works? >>

woolworth yes, that it what i was talking about. >> that is not surprising. in the early 1950's? >> yes. >> the naacp's agenda and the 1950's was to take more litigation approach. hence why the brown v. board of education case and cases around the integration of schools. they were reluctant to do anything that would involve them in direct confrontation. they sort of jump on the bandwagon or become more comfortable with it by the time we get to the student sit in movement, in part because they see how effective it is. king himself even articulated

the effectiveness of doing sit ins and direct confrontation. at that point in time in the 1950's, and in the midst of the cold war, i think the naacp felt they did not want to make any missteps whereby they might be labeled communist. there real goal at that time was to approach civil rights through the courts. >> left. of those citizens of 1960? -- sit ins of 1960? >> the citizens continue -- sit ins and continue into the 1960's. at the 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 an 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. >> this morning. >> we appreciate your time. thank you.