"The Durham Sit-Ins: Sixty Years Later"
BY BRANDON K. WINFORD
A United Negro College Fund (UNCF) symposium, “The Negro Southerner Speaks,” on public education was held in New York City in December 1956. The panelists pictured here are (left to right): John Hervey, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., August Heckscher, (director of the Twentieth Century Fund), Quincy Howe (ABC commentator), Carl Rowan (writer for the Minneapolis Tribune), and Dr. Rufus E. Clement (Atlanta University president). Photograph in the John Hervey Wheeler Collection, Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library.
February 8, 2020—On February 8, 1960, sixty years ago today, black students from North Carolina College at Durham (NCC) stepped out in fine fashion wearing their Sunday best to sit-down at the local Woolworth's and other five and dime stores in downtown Durham. They joined their counterparts at the Agricultural & Technical College of North Carolina (A&T) and Bennett College in Greensboro after those students led similar lunch counter demonstrations a week earlier. The NCC students alongside several white Duke University students did an end-run around city leaders. The traditional black leadership had failed to support the 1957 Royal Ice-Cream sit-in, although they provided legal assistance. That evening, students learned from attorney Floyd B. McKissick, Sr. that they had the "moral" support of the adult leadership, including the Durham Committee on Negro Affairs (DCNA), the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) , and the Durham Ministerial Alliance.
The 1960 sit-in movement is significant because it represents a defining moment in the state's history and the history of the civil rights movement. It gave North Carolina national attention at the start of a new decade and held larger political implications amid that year's fierce gubernatorial and presidential elections. Finally, it brought forth a new generation of student leaders and served as a catalyst for lunch counter protests across the American South.
On February 11, John Hervey Wheeler, Mechanics and Farmers Bank president and chairman of the DCNA backed up the organization's support for the courageous young college students in a local press release. The statement affirmed the DCNA's “obligation to support any peaceful movement which seeks to remove from the customs of our beloved Southland; those unfair practices based upon race and color which has for so long been recognized as a . . . stumbling block to moral and economic progress of the region.” Wheeler recalled the DCNA’s previous “survey of the 5 and 10 cent stores located in Durham,” which “indicated that between 50 and 60 percent of the persons entering the Kress, Silvers, and Woolworth Stores, were colored people.” Yet they were denied complete freedom of movement.
The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Reverend Ralph D. Abernathy arrived in Durham on February 16 to lend the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's (SCLC) support to the sit-down strikes. King told 1,500 people gathered at White Rock Baptist Church not to “fear going to jail.” “If the officials threaten to arrest us for standing up for our rights we must answer by saying that we are willing and prepared to fill up the jails of the south.” “Maybe it will take this willingness to stay in jail to arouse the dozing conscience of our nation.”
On March 15, while students halted demonstrations to allow for negotiations, a group of thirty black and white leaders met behind closed doors. The leaders included white banking and insurance executive Watts Hill, Jr., North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company president Asa T. Spaulding, and John Hervey Wheeler among others. This was a regular occurrence between Durham's city leaders. However, this time there would be no satisfactory agreement to end demonstrations. While we don't know all of the details of the March meeting, Hill penned a five-page letter to Wheeler a few days later. The banker had apparently told the group that the demonstrations were student-led, which meant that unless city leaders negotiated directly with them, the sit-down strikes would continue.
"You, of all people," Hill explained to Wheeler "must realize that there are some very real dangers in widening the gap which already exists between the two racial groups." Hill further warned Wheeler about the political backlash that would result from the sit-ins. In particular, Hill worried that the Democratic ticket would be split three-ways between the moderate candidates (Terry Sanford, State Attorney General Malcolm B. Seawell, and John Larkins). This would mean that the fourth candidate, I. Beverly Lake, the segregationist law professor and former assistant state attorney general, would win the Democratic primary. While Hill supported Seawell and vied for the DCNA's support for his candidate, Sanford eventually won the June 25 run-off election against Lake and went on to defeat the Republican candidate Robert Gavin in the general election.
It took until that summer, amid ongoing demonstrations, before officials at the national five and dime chains reached an agreement on July 27, 1960 to desegregate the lunch counters in the Bull City. It joined other cities in North Carolina such as Greensboro, High Point, Winston-Salem, Raleigh, and Charlotte in removing these barriers. In April 1960, black college students from across the South gathered on the campus of Shaw University in Raleigh where they formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to provide grassroots organizing efforts in the region.
Throughout the rest of the 1960s, SNCC became a critical artery in the black struggle for freedom and human rights. While the Civil Rights Act of 1964 settled the issue of public accommodations and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 addressed electoral politics, John Hervey Wheeler pointed to the "implementation phase" of the civil rights movement. He believed it to be perhaps the most difficult area moving forward because it represented unchartered territory.
So here we are. The Tar Heel State is gearing up for another gubernatorial election at the start of a new decade and against the backdrop of insurmountable obstacles. The City of Durham is faced with an urgent housing crisis decades in the making. We would do well to remember the McDougald Terrace Mothers Club and its fierce leader Joyce C. Thorpe who led the charge for decent, healthy, and livable public housing in the city. These efforts led to the U.S. Supreme Court case Thorpe v. Housing Authority of the City of Durham (1966, 1968), which resulted in national reforms within the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
The city recently ended its celebration of 150 years in existence. Now, the times demand that we take a look at the history staring us right in the face. This time, we can only afford to do what's right for all of our citizens. In the lasting words of John Hervey Wheeler, "the battle for freedom begins every morning." Let a New Day begin in Durham. Let us march on till victory is won.
Brandon K. Winford is an assistant professor of history at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He is a historian of late nineteenth and twentieth century United States and African American history with areas of specialization in civil rights and black business history. He is the author of John Hervey Wheeler, Black Banking, and the Economic Struggle for Civil Rights (University Press of Kentucky, 2020). You can follow him on Twitter and Instagram: @Winhistory24.