Читать книгу Freedom Facts and Firsts - Jessie Carney Smith - Страница 47

This South Carolina community was the scene of several civil rights initiatives, beginning with the 1955 desegregation of St. Anne Catholic School, making it the first integrated school in the state. Rock Hill also launched a successful bus boycott in 1957 that was led by the Reverend Cecil A. Ivory, an African American Presbyterian minister and activist affiliated with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Ivory provided leadership and guidance to local students participating in civil rights activities in sympathy with the Greensboro, North Carolina sit-in on February 1, 1960. The Rock Hill sit-in was the first in the state of South Carolina. It began on February 12, 1960, with 100 black students, mostly from Friendship Junior College. At the city’s Woolworth’s and McCrory’s stores demonstrators were subjected to violent responses by unsympathetic whites. One black student was knocked off a stool at a lunch counter, and whites threw ammonia to cause eye irritation and further discourage other protesters. The stores closed the lunch counters down temporarily rather than change their policies, but when they reopened on February 23, the protesters returned to continue the demonstrations. Ivory coordinated mass meetings, organized and directed the demonstrations, and made national headlines when he was denied service at McCrory’s despite being in his wheelchair. Demonstrations expanded to the bus terminals, resulting in 70 arrests, and continued into the following year. More student arrests resulted in the 1961 Rock Hill “Jail-In” (in which the students involved made a pact not to accept bail and to do hard time rather than submit to further discrimination) but the protests ultimately achieved success.

Fletcher F. Moon