news-record.com

GIBSONVILLE — Stepping into the classroom, the students at Gibsonville Elementary School tried to imagine themselves inside a five-and-dime store in 1960.

“Hi, welcome to Woolworth’s,” teacher Brandy Jo Brehm said.
 

Students filed in and saw at the front of the room a table decorated to resemble a lunch counter. Atop the counter were coffee mugs, Coca-Cola bottles, a menu and plaster cupcakes made by students. Four empty stools were lined along the front, and a large sign announced that the day’s specials were “courage and justice.”
 

Gibsonville and all other schools in Guilford County Schools celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Greensboro sit-ins by holding “teach-ins” on Jan. 28. A GCS planning committee worked with staff from N.C. A&T and the International Civil Rights Center & Museum during the past year to plan the teach-in.
 

Brehm talked to Gibsonville students about the courage of the Greensboro Four and other civil rights activists who fought segregation.
 

“They were afraid but … they had to call on the courage within themselves,” Brehm said. “Can you imagine being one of the people sitting here?”
 

She asked the students to tell a classmate about a time they were brave.
 

“I had to face my fear of heights when I went to California to see my aunt … and get on an airplane,” fifth-grade student Nancy Mitchell, 11, said.
 

The classes talked about the opening of the International Civil Rights Center & Museum and flipped through coloring books provided by the committee.
 

“I’m going to sit in that chair,” Nancy said, pointing to an illustration of the Woolworth counter and four stools.
 

Students picked a letter to color from the word “courage” or “justice” and came up with their own words or phrases.
 

Fifth-grade student Garvin Stewart, 10, chose the letter “O” because “you have to offer yourself to have freedom and have rights for black people,” he said.

Gibsonville’s art teacher Julie Rachlin decorated the room for the teach-in. She was part of the GCS planning committee.

Contact Jamie Kennedy Jones at 373-7088 or jamie.kennedy @news-record.com

--