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GREENSBORO — More than a decade in the making, the International Civil Rights Center and Museum will officially open Feb. 1 — 50 years after the historic sit-ins that made the site famous.

“We had hoped to open it earlier,” said Melvin “Skip” Alston, a museum founder and chairman of the Guilford County Board of Commissioners. “It has a more significant meaning now, 50 years later.”

Today, the building at Elm Street and February One Place is a hub of construction workers and machinery, beams and sawdust.

Above the door, the name — F.W. WOOLWORTH CO. — stands out in gold letters on a red background. The building is the former site of a five-and-dime where four N.C. A&T students requested service at a whites-only lunch counter and helped inspire sit-ins across the segregated South.

In 1993, Alston and Earl Jones, now a state legislator, founded the nonprofit Sit-In Movement, which owns the building and has supervised the renovation. They see the museum as a celebration of Greensboro’s history and a monument to American ideals.

“It’s going to be the crown jewel of downtown Greensboro,” Alston said.

But the museum also will focus outside the city. The Greensboro sit-ins sparked similar nonviolent protests around the world; the museum will house exhibits and artifacts highlighting those events.

After the opening, organizers hope to continue the international presence, inviting dignitaries from around the globe, Jones said.

“It represents a struggle for people to fight oppression throughout the world, not just America,” he said.

The nearly $16 million project has received its share of criticism. It set and missed optimistic goals for opening in 2005.

Organizers say the delays stemmed from structural and design problems. They will finish within the initial 12- to 14-year timeline, they said, which they based on schedules for similar projects in Memphis, Tenn., and Birmingham, Ala.

Charlie Heritage, the project manager, expects his teams to finish by Oct. 31. At that time, they’ll hand the building over to the exhibit developers.

The renovations have tried to preserve as much of the original structure as possible, he said.

That includes the terrazzo floors and plaster moldings, as well as the marble and limestone storefront.

Then, there is the lunch counter.

The museum will house the original counter and stools where the four N.C. A&T students — Jibreel Khazan (then known as Ezell Blair Jr.), Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, and David Richmond — staged their historic sit-in.

Museum officials said in February they also will display:

• A chair where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once sat during an arraignment after a civil rights protest.
• The medicine bag of Dr. George Evans, the first African American physician who worked at a historically all-white hospital in Greensboro.
• A piece of stained glass from the Ku Klux Klan bombing of a Baptist church in Birmingham, which killed four girls as they got ready for Sunday school.

Today, the windows of the Woolworth building show the iconic image of the four students, resolve resting heavy in their eyes, as they left the store on that February evening in 1960.

Museum officials said they are planning a grand opening celebration for Feb. 1, honoring the peaceful protest.

“It’s going to be a joy to see, 50 years later, the actual counter that was segregated,” Alston said. “Now, it’s celebrated.”

Contact Tricia L. Nadolny at 373-7028 or tricia.nadolny@news-record.com