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The once-busy variety store on bustling Main Street is long gone, replaced by an imposing center-city hotel.

But the Rev. Rufus Newlin  can still see that Woolworth’s store exactly as it was 49 years ago  this week, when he and 25  other teenagers forever changed their small corner of the world.

“Looking back on it, the thing that stands out in my mind is the precision,” Newlin said of Guilford County’s lesser-known sit-in protest in February 1960. “It was very precise. We went in, we pretended to be shopping, and then he (the group’s leader) doffed his hat.

“That was the signal,” Newlin said, “and we all went for the seats.”

The sit-ins at the Woolworth’s store started 10 days  after their more famous counterpart in the Greensboro five-and-dime. The High Point protesters were inspired by news of the other protest led by four N.C. A&T  students.

But the High Point event has its own claim to fame as the civil rights movement’s only such protest orchestrated by high school students.

This week, a group dedicated to commemorating the event will unveil a black marble memorial with a bronze panel depicting the lunch-counter scene that fateful day.

“It’s all about introducing the kids of today to some history that isn’t in a history book,” said City Councilwoman Mary Lou Blakeney,  who joined Newlin and the other high schoolers on Feb. 11, 1960.  The memorial is on Wrenn Street next to the canopied entrance to the  Hotel High Point, where Woolworth’s rear entry was in 1960.

Blakeney helped found the February 11th Association  in High Point five years ago, after she became concerned the event had been forgotten.

She got the inspiration attending the celebration of Greensboro’s sit-ins in 2004,  thinking how poignant it was and how sad that High Point had nothing like it.

That year, she only had 10 days to pull together the first of what would become an annual prayer vigil at the site. That first commemoration attracted 47  participants, but the event has grown steadily.

Last year, the group persuaded North Carolina officials to put up a historical marker at the site.

The new memorial of marble and bronze is being dedicated Wednesday  afternoon. It was crafted by Oregon artist Thomas Jay Warren,  who also did the nearby statue of High Point native and jazz great John Coltrane.  The new memorial cost about $80,000,  paid for with $40,000 each from the city of High Point and Guilford County governments.

Blakeney and Newlin still remember the racial slurs and threats that bystanders slung at the students as they returned to the Woolworth’s counter day after day. Eventually, Woolworth’s took out all the stools at its lunch counter so all patrons had to stand and eat. Before that, seats were reserved for white customers.

The students took that as a victory and moved their protest to two other variety stores nearby.

Now the teenagers of yesteryear are senior citizens who look back with pride at what they did to make America a better place for everybody. And they say their memories of that difficult time are the most important thing they can pass along to posterity.

“I think it’s important our kids be prepared, and that goes for children of all races,” Blakeney said. “It behooves us to educate them about what happened in the past so it can’t happen in the future.”

Contact Taft Wireback at 373-7100 or taft.wireback@news-record.com