'Countless acts of heroism'
GREENSBORO — As he came upon the two-sided, 1950s-era Coca-Cola machine Monday during one of the first public tours of the $23 million International Civil Rights Center & Museum, James Craig of Compton, Calif., paused and shook his head.
“So we couldn’t even get our drinks from the same side,” said Craig, who had traveled to Greensboro just for the opening. “That was crazy.”
The artifact helped museum officials re-create what the South was like when four N.C. A&T freshmen sat down at the segregated Woolworth lunch counter. On Feb. 1, 1960, they couldn’t even get a 10 cent cup of coffee alongside a white customer at the five-and-dime.
Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, Jibreel Khazan (formerly known as Ezell Blair Jr.) and the late David Richmond persisted, launching a movement that eventually rid the South of Jim Crow laws.
The museum’s opening Monday, which celebrated the historic event, drew Gov. Bev Perdue and a host of politicians.
It also drew Hal Sieber, a former speechwriter for John F. Kennedy; Capt. Harvey Alexander of the famed black Tuskegee Airmen, whose uniform is in the museum; and Henry Frye, the first black chief justice of the state Supreme Court.
Geneva Tisdale, one of the former black Woolworth employees, was there, too, wanting to see what they did with the lunch counter where she worked for decades.
“When you have people who lived the experience, there is really a tremendous pressure on you,” Curator Bamidele Demerson said after leading a tour.
Designed by the same team that worked on the Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery. Ala., and the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tenn., the museum has been envisioned as a place where college professors can teach African American history courses. Where international peace activists can visit with community leaders. Where the story of the civil rights movement can be told in a way that children and scholars can appreciate.
Its exhibits include a white Ku Klux Klan robe. A shard of glass from the racially-motivated bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham that killed four young girls. The mug shots of hundreds of people arrested in demonstrations across the South.
“I was struck by the countless acts of heroism by so many people, black and white,” Thomas Perez, the new head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, said after a tour. He represented the Obama administration. “The countless people whose names we may never know.”
From the main entry, with its gray slate walls and terrazzo floors, tours start with a ride down an escalator to the basement, where the U.S. Constitution is juxtaposed with “whites only” and “colored only” signs.
“It frightens me how recent this was in our history,” said U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan, a Democrat from Greensboro. She helped secure millions for the museum while she was a member of the state legislature.
From there, visitors encounter a re-creation of the conversations among the four college freshmen in their dorm.
“How was I supposed to eat?” McNeil says in a recorded portion of an exhibit, referring to a trip back from New York after Christmas break and not being able to find a place to eat when the bus stopped in Virginia.
“It made you feel like you were less than a man. ... It hurt.”
Afterward, the screen rises to reveal furniture from the dorm, and then another re-creation: the moment the four decide to go to the lunch counter.
“This (museum) causes me to take an inventory of myself, and I’m forced to ask what have I done lately,” McCain said. “I’m hoping this museum will issue this same challenge to others.”
The story progresses visually to the moment when the four sat down at the Formica counter. Images appear on screens that run the length of the counter, including the re-created dialogue between the four and a black worker from the kitchen who scolds them for making things harder for the black workers.
“It’s inspirational to think that these college students had the determination and the will to see this through,” City Manager Rashad Young said as he walked past the screens fading against the lunch counter.
His group soon came across an exhibit featuring a medical bag donated by one of Greensboro’s longtime black doctors, who along with others successfully sued to integrate Moses Cone Hospital. The move forced other hospitals that accepted federal funds to do the same.
“I’ve been assured Dr. George Evans delivered about every black baby in this city at one time, and he’s still practicing,” a tour guide said.
When they got to an exhibit titled “I’ll Make Me a World,” most in the tour recognized the life-sized cutout of Thurgood Marshall, the first black U.S. Supreme Court justice.
Standing beside him is a cutout of J. Kenneth Lee of Greensboro, who as an NAACP counsel in North Carolina got many local protesters out of jail during much of the 1960s.
“The most telling moment for me was going through the 'Room of Shame,’ ” McNeil, another of the Greensboro Four, said of an exhibit with footage of the National Guard escorting a black student into a previously all-white school against the background of an angry white mob.
“It brought back all the horror,” McNeil said.
Contact Nancy McLaughlin at 373-7049 or nancy.mclaughlin@news-record.com
Accompanying Photos
Photo Caption: A VIP tour goes through the International Civil Rights Center & Museum on opening day.
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