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GREENSBORO — On a morning frigid enough to justify hot coffee as a constitutional right, the International Civil Rights Center & Museum debuted Monday amid calls to build upon the legacy of what happened there exactly 50 years earlier.

The outdoor ceremony on South Elm Street capped a 17-year effort to restore the former F.W. Woolworth five-and-dime as a monument to the sit-in movement, which was ignited there Feb. 1, 1960, by four black N.C. A&T freshmen who simply wanted to sip coffee at the whites-only lunch counter.

Franklin McCain, one of the four, urged the crowd to see the museum as proof that even the most warranted change does not come easily.

Activists must seize the moment to bring about change, not await a time when “the masses” support it, McCain said.  
“The facts don’t matter if the dream is big enough,” McCain said, adding that changes always are difficult because people don’t like to make them. “Take pride. Take joy. But more than anything else, take charge.”

Attendance at the 45-minute ceremony was trimmed by subfreezing temperatures. Five minutes before the 8 a.m. ceremony, a moderate-size crowd gathered in the public area south of February One Place, where two Jumbotron screens had been set up in anticipation of a larger turnout.

But listeners made up for their smaller-than-anticipated numbers with enthusiasm, several times breaking out in spontaneous chants of “Aggie Pride!” to denote the school’s link  to the 1960 event and to more recent efforts that helped make the museum a reality.

Thomas E. Perez, the Obama administration’s emissary to the event, echoed McCain’s theme that work remains on the civil rights front. Racism still exists both in its most overt and more subtle forms, he said.

“We need this civil rights museum so that we remember our history, however painful it may be,” said Perez, assistant attorney general for civil rights.

“We need a robust civil rights division so that we can continue to break down barriers to equal opportunity.”
Subtle racism helped make the home-foreclosure crisis worse for “communities of color” because unscrupulous lenders preyed on them before the nation’s housing bubble burst, he said.

Under Obama’s leadership, civil rights lawyers are aggressively enforcing laws aimed at stopping such exploitation, Perez said in a later interview.

Other speakers included the Rev. Jesse Jackson, U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan and Gov. Bev Perdue.

Jackson, an A&T alumnus, delivered the invocation, giving thanks for the “four children” who helped end officially sanctioned segregation and for many at A&T and in the larger community who stood by them.

Two of the other A&T four, Joseph McNeil and Jibreel Khazan, joined McCain on the stage. Seated with them was Chip Richmond, son of the fourth participant, the late David Richmond.

Other dignitaries on the stage or in the VIP section included U.S. Reps. Howard Coble, Brad Miller and Mel Watt; state House of Representatives Speaker Joe Hackney and several other state legislators; William Barber, state NAACP president; and Greensboro Mayor Bill Knight.

The ribbon-cutting was hosted by the two men who initially articulated the museum concept, Melvin “Skip” Alston, now chairman of the Guilford County Board of Commissioners, and state Rep. Earl Jones.

The only hint of controversy occurred when the Revs. Nelson Johnson, Cardes Brown and several other local activists began chanting loudly, “We can’t wait.” They held aloft a flier that listed issues within the Greensboro Police Department and elsewhere in the community that they said exemplify the “shameful and enduring magnitude of injustices in our city.”

The project itself has faced controversy since its 1993 inception, when the Woolworth chain announced the downtown store’s closing. Issues included periods in the late 1990s when it appeared money was being raised aggressively without appreciable progress on the building; the surprise discovery of structural flaws in the building that derailed a plan for opening the museum five years ago; and, more recently, a dispute about building a hotel nearby in a deal that includes Alston as a broker and federal tax credits.

But for the most part, controversy was nowhere in sight Monday as Alston, Jackson, Jones and Perez wielded scissors to snip the museum’s last obstacle, a gleaming red ribbon.

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