Читать книгу Freedom Facts and Firsts - Jessie Carney Smith - Страница 75

Shortly after the Greensboro sit-ins began on February 1, 1960, High Point and neighboring cities in North Carolina and other states launched similar efforts. In the case of High Point, sit-ins began on February 11 after coordinated planning between local leader Reverend B. Elton Cox and other activists, such as Floyd McKissick, and the network of ministers in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Cox also benefited from the presence of veteran civil rights activist Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth from Birmingham, Alabama. He had invited Shuttlesworth to High Point for a speaking engagement, not knowing that the students in Greensboro would take matters into their own hands and generate new energy for the Civil Rights Movement. Shuttlesworth in turn contacted Ella Baker at SCLC headquarters in Atlanta, and told her to inform Martin Luther King Jr. about the recent developments. Not only did Baker forward information to King, she also called contacts at other Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to urge widespread student activism. The protests at the downtown Woolworth’s store led by Cox included 26 African American high school students the first day; it continued despite confrontations with whites opposed to changes in the store’s lunch counter policy. One of the original high school student demonstrators, Mary Lou Blakeney, later co-founded the February 11 Association to commemorate the High Point sit-ins, and on February 11, 2008, she, Cox, and others unveiled a historical marker at the former site of the Woolworth store in the city.

Fletcher F. Moon