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    Lunch Counter Sit-Ins: How Photographs Helped Foster Peaceful Civil Rights Protests
    Lunch Counter Sit-Ins: How Photographs Helped Foster Peaceful Civil Rights Protests
    Lunch Counter Sit-Ins: How Photographs Helped Foster Peaceful Civil Rights Protests
    Ebook80 pages42 minutes

    Lunch Counter Sit-Ins: How Photographs Helped Foster Peaceful Civil Rights Protests

    By Danielle Smith-Llera

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    About this ebook

    On point historical photographs combined with strong narration bring the saga of the Woolworth lunch counter sit-ins in the early 1960s to life. Readers will learn about the four brave college students who started it all, as well as the many who came after. These events changed the world. The photographer who took the photographs shown in this book is now in his 90s, but he agreed to an exclusive interview for this book.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCapstone Young Readers
    Release dateMay 19, 2020
    ISBN9780756567408
    Lunch Counter Sit-Ins: How Photographs Helped Foster Peaceful Civil Rights Protests
    Author

    Danielle Smith-Llera

    Danielle Smith-Llera grew up in coastal Virginia, hearing unforgettable tales about her Mexican and Irish ancestors. She first moved overseas to teach in international schools in Hungary and Brazil. Life in the U.S. Foreign Service has taken her around the world to live in India, Jamaica, Romania, Belgium, the United Kingdom, and Washington, DC. She loves sharing stories—fiction, nonfiction, and a mixture of both—in classrooms, museum exhibits, and, of course, books.

    Read more from Danielle Smith Llera

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      Book preview

      Lunch Counter Sit-Ins - Danielle Smith-Llera

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      Cover

      Title Page

      Chapter One:A Simple Request

      Chapter Two:A New Kind of Weapon

      Chapter Three:Behind the Scenes

      Chapter Four:A Peaceful War

      Timeline

      Glossary

      Additional Resources

      Source Notes

      Select Bibliography

      Index

      About the Author

      Copyright

      Back Cover

      Chapter One

      A SIMPLE REQUEST

      When four young men planned a lunch counter sit-in, the last thing on their minds was the thought that, one day, there would be a monument to them.

      Four young men arrived at the Blair home on Sunday night, January 31, 1960. The visit did not seem unusual—at least to those who did not yet know their plan. Ezell Blair Jr. had grown up in Greensboro, North Carolina. He and his three friends went to an all-black college there. The 18-year-old men shared meals, studied together, and stayed up late talking in the dorms of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, nicknamed A&T. But tonight Blair had brought his friends home on urgent business that would change the course of their lives—and make history. He later recalled telling his parents, We’re going to do something tomorrow that’s going to shake up the nation.¹ Blair never forgot his father’s shock and intense questioning: Do you guys realize that what you are doing is going to affect not only your families, your friends, [but also] your community? Are you ready for that?²

      Blair’s friend Joseph McNeil had been ready for weeks. After winter break with family in New York, he had traveled by bus back to college and the trip left him furious. In the northern United States, he enjoyed the same freedoms as other citizens. But at the bus station in Richmond, Virginia, he ordered a hot dog and was refused service because of his skin color. Later that year, the Supreme Court would rule that segregation in stations serving buses traveling between states was unconstitutional. But that was months away, and black citizens knew that new laws were often not enforced. Those laws did not change the attitudes or the injustice they faced. Fear of violence made demanding rights a challenge, even when those rights were protected by the U.S. Constitution. At least 4,000 black people had been murdered in hate crimes since the late 1800s after the abolition of slavery.

      McNeil’s friends shared his frustrations. For two weeks they debated relentlessly what to do. On January 31 they came up with a plan. Are you chicken?³ McNeil asked Franklin McCain. Raised in Washington D.C., McCain had witnessed slow progress toward desegregation in the nation’s capital. No, man, McCain responded, and poked Blair and David Richmond in the chest, asking the same question. Richmond said he was in. Blair was reluctant at first. But when McCain held a vote, four hands went up. The foursome were now united in their mission.

      The four young men met in front of the A&T campus library the next afternoon, February 1, 1960. They dressed for their mission in their best clothes. McCain wore his Air Force ROTC uniform. They walked downtown through a city divided by race. Their own school had been founded in 1891 to keep black students from entering all-white North Carolina State University. The lives of Greensboro’s black and white residents rarely overlapped. Black citizens squeezed into cramped houses in the southeastern neighborhoods of the city where they attended their own churches and schools. White people filled neighborhoods of more

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