Greensboro Four Case Study

There were four young girls by the names of Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley were killed and fourteen others were injured. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at three of the girls’ funeral. The fourth girl’s family requested to have a separate funeral. There were over 8,000 people at both of the funerals. During this time blacks were being arrested for disorderly conduct. They were drinking alcohol, loitering, and being obnoxious. They were even trying to harm whites as they passed

Emmett Till was a fourteen year old african american boy from Chicago, Illinois. He took a train to Money, Mississippi in the summer to visit family. Money, Mississippi was known as a very “white powered” town. It was when Emmett whistled at a white woman in a convenient store that he changed history. Two white men came into Emmett’s family’s home and took him in the night, over the series of several hours they had beaten, shot, and drowned him in a river 30 miles away from Money. When he was found he had a cotton gin fan tied to his neck and his face was unrecognizable. He was sent back to Chicago where his mother had identified him as her son by the ring on his finger. His mother Mamie Till ordered the people the leave the casket open during

In the first presentation, I noticed an event called the Greensboro Sit-ins. This was a single event that sparked a nationwide movement and flood of support for the civil rights movement and the issue of business owners withholding service from those who were not white. On February 1st, 1960, 4 students of the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University sat at a whites-only lunch table, requested service, and were then denied and asked to leave. When they left, they went to tell campus leaders what had happened and as a result gained people that wanted to participate in the sit-in. It is said that “the next morning twenty-nine neatly dressed male and female [NCATSU] students sat at the Woolworth’s lunch counter,” the same counter where those first four students sat (NorthCarolinaHistory.org). After this happened, protests occurred each week and hundreds of students were showing up at Woolworth’s. Following this, more and more students from around the US were staging sit ins at segregated lunch counters as a form of non-violent protest against discrimination.

In 1906, Ed Johnson was convicted after witnesses claimed he sexually assaulted white female by using a leather strap. Although Johnson provided numerous alibis about his part in the sexual assault, he was still convicted for the crime and sentenced to death by a jury of only white people. While in jail, Johnson was brutally murdered by a mob that broke in. Twenty-five years later, the Scottsboro Boys were convicted for gang rape of two white women while traveling on a train. Of the nine Scottsboro boys accused in this case, eight of them were sentenced to death. This conviction raised public awareness and was one factor that saw the birth of the Civil Rights Movement. Just a few years later, three African American men, Ed Brown, Arthur Ellington and Henry Shields were all beaten and tortured into confessing for the killing of a white farmer in Mississippi. This incident became the well known Supreme Court decision titled Brown v. Mississippi (Grimsley). These were just average African American men living average lives when suddenly they are accused of crimes they did not commit. Earl Smith and Angela J. Hattery says in their journal that “many of them were at least twenty six years old when incarcerated whereas, some were sent to prison while they were still in their late teens and early 20s.” Before they were incarcerated, many of them were still getting their education and building careers and relationships. While these men were accused of their crimes based on their race, there are other factors that play a role in a wrongful conviction.

Recent protests and rallies have brought to light that discrimination plagues our society still today. When Discrimination and segregation was regularly practiced, Emmett Till was still young and lived in Chicago. Since Till lived in the north he was not exposed to the segregation he would soon experience in the south. His uncle and cousins were used to segregation because they lived in Mississippi. When he visited them one summer he would learn how truly terrifying discrimination could be. Till was only 14 when brutally murdered for “offending” a white woman, but from this brutality a new era of civil rights movements changed the world.

Greensboro’s civil reputation was put to challenge once school boards attempted to block integration, and when majority of blacks would not be given high-ranking jobs. Sit-ins were used to protest segregation in public facilities, but eventually riots struck as a necessity for black demands to be heard The points effectively prove Chafe’s thesis by presenting the barriers imposed by Greensboro’s leaders to avoid integration for educational, working, political, and social benefits for African Americans.

To understand the present and the future one must understand the past.  The book Civilities and Civil Rights by William Chafe provided a detailed look at North Carolina, specifically Greensboro between the years of the 1930s through the 1960’s. The state of events that occur can be linked to many of the events that one sees today due to the fact that the foundation and structure of the south was built on racism. No one came straight out and said they were racist, instead the problem was covered up with civilities. Few leaders wanted to rock the boat or change things that would allow African Americans rights. This report will show how the civilities during this time hindered the success of civil rights in Greensboro, and also how it was harder for activists in Greensboro to win support and accomplish their goals.

Emmett Till, a 14 year old African American boy from Chicago, was brutally murdered. Emmett was visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi and went into a small store, but no one really knows what happened inside the store. Till had a slight stutter because he’d had polio as a young child. He was taught to whistle before he said a hard word. Carolyn told her husband, Roy Bryant, that Emmett said ‘Bye, baby’ and whistled at her and she felt insulted. Emmett was kidnapped, tortured, and killed by J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant. Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam beat, gouged out his eye, tied him to a cotton gin fan, and threw Emmett into a river. Till’s body couldn’t be identified and a jury of all white men said both Roy and J.W. were not guilty. Emmett Till was a black teenager who was killed in Money, Mississippi by Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam.

It has been a little over 59 years since the horrific murder of 14 year old Emmett Till; yet the impact of his murder still looms over our society today. Emmett Till was a young African-American boy who thought he was just visiting his family for the summer of 1955. However, things changed for him on the night of August 28th when he was kidnapped and later murdered by two Caucasian males. The trial that followed his murder would be one that the American people would not soon forget, and one that would ignite the fire for the African-American Civil Rights Movement. Due to the heinous crime committed by two young males, Emmett Till was able to start a civil rights movement for his race; and while the two killers

On the date of July 25, 1941 near the bustling city of Chicago, a young healthy baby boy was born and his name was Emmett Louis “Bobo” Till. Just like every child on our great planet, he breathed, talked, walked, went to school, and even slept just like every child and human being on this Earth. Sadly though, he wasn’t treated equally like every human being that is on our beautiful blue planet. As most people know, Emmett was an African American. At first, in our present time, this would never be an issue with the set of Amendments and laws passed in the case of individual freedom, though at the known time Emmett lived in, it was considered a period of mass discrimination and prejudice for the mass of people who skin was Black. The Jim Crow

Not only did the Greensboro lunch counter sit-ins happen, but many other major protesting events happened too such as: Little Rock 9, Freedom Rides, Emmett Till’s murder, The Montgomery Bus Boycott, and many more (Greensboro Sit-Ins). When the sit-ins took place, the 4 black men sat at an all-white lunch counter and asked for coffee. They were told that they could not be served and that they had to leave the whites-only section. As the protests continued, the whites got more violent towards the four men. This pushed the blacks even more so to end racial inequality (Melanie Lacey). This went on for 5 months, 3 weeks, and 3 days. They were determined to end racial inequality and wanted all races to be treated equally (Greensboro

The Greensboro sit-ins occurred in 1960 in Greensboro, North Carolina. The Greensboro Sit-Ins was a movement with the purpose to banish the inequalities that black people faced. A black person was treated very differently, unequally, and unfairly compared to how a white person was treated. The Greensboro Sit-Ins was noted to be one of the most important events in the Civil Rights movement. Racism and unequal treatment had been a common occurrence around North Carolina since colonial times. Even though slavery was abolished, black people felt they deserved just as much equal freedom as a white person.

The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) used a form of protest by union workers called sit-ins. After it was successful with CORE 4 African Americans Joseph McNeil, Ezell Blair, Jr, David Richmond and Franklin McCain suggested a sit in Woolworth department store. They were afraid, but they did it. They entered and bought supplied, then sat at the lunch counter and ordered coffee. The people there wouldn’t service them, but serviced them on the other counter. The four stayed until they closed and said they would do that every day until they were serviced. They left the Woolworth exited and persuaded by what they did. This convinced more and more African American to sit-in and wait until they were serviced. The NAACP and SClC were nervous about the sit-in campaign.

February 1st, 1960; the Greensboro Sit Ins; Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair, Jr., Joseph McNeil, and David Richmond. “Segregated conditions were as characteristic of Greensboro, however, as they were of cities with reputations for racial violence and intimidation.” The Greensboro Sit Ins made a huge impact not only in North Carolina, but along the Southeast states; thirteen states and fifty five different cities. This was where a group of four black male freshmen college students at A&T State University who

The specific examination of the Greensboro, N.C. lunch counter sit-ins that ignited a wave of similarly executed sit-downs throughout the 1960 was accredited to the strong personal ties amongst the initial Greensboro students. Two were roommates and all had gone to the same high school and shared a wealth of common experiences ranging from smuggling beer into the dormitory to the remembering the injustices of Little Rock. The idea of a month long Woolworth sit-in was initially discussed in the dormitory in a most informal manner. This evidence inexplicably presented by Mr. Gladwell is in complete contradiction to his statement requiring a hierarchy in which national or local leaders and organizations operating in a hierarchical arraignment were essential to the development of significant social change.