How to Celebrate Civil Rights Advances

by Doug Hewitt

February is African American History Month, and what month could be better to celebrate advances in civil rights. For young people in the United States, it can be difficult to imagine a time when signs announced certain drinking fountains or lunch counters were "white only." But it was a stark reality. One movement to advance civil rights began at just such a lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C., and a museum has opened to celebrate the beginning of the movement.

The International Civil Rights Center & Museum (ICRCM) held its ribbon-cutting ceremony on Feb. 1, 2010, to commemorate the sit-in movement which began exactly 50 years earlier when four young African-American men were refused service at a downtown F. W. Woolworth's store's "whites only" lunch counter. The young men refused to leave until the store closed and they returned the following day with more African-American students to again sit at the counter, despite being refused service. The momentum of the sit-in movement continued to build until the store was desegregated on July 26, 1960. By August of that year more than 70,000 people had participated in sit-ins.

The founders of the ICRCM include Melvin "Skip" Alston, who has been active in civic and volunteer organizations and who in 2003 was the first African-American elected to serve as chairman of the Board of Commissioners for Guilford County, N.C. The other founder is Earl F. Jones, who ran an anti-poverty program in Greensboro for nearly 20 years and is a leader of social and political reform.

The sit-in movement is a good example of a non-violent movement, one championed by activist Martin Luther King Jr. as a means to win civil rights for all, regardless of color. King believed that people should be judged on the basis of their character and not on the color of their skin. Prejudices remain, but African-American History Month is a good opportunity to celebrate the advances in civil rights.

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