Читать книгу Freedom Facts and Firsts - Jessie Carney Smith - Страница 77

The sit-ins of the 1950s and 1960s reached many cities and towns, including Lexington, Kentucky. It was the local and national press that carried the story of the sit-ins to the public and helped to preserve such activities in the annals of African American history. The press of Lexington, Kentucky, however, occasionally carried short stories about civil rights activities in town without providing important photographs to give a visual documentation of that history. Some scholars argue that The Herald (the morning paper) and The Leader (the afternoon paper) did irreparable damage to the Civil Rights Movement at the time and damaged the historical record. As a result, readers missed one of the most important stories on civil rights of the twentieth century.

The weekly and peaceful sit-ins that black and white protesters held in Lexington, beginning in 1959 and extending into the early 1960s, targeted racially segregated lunch counters, hotels, and theaters. Top executives of The Herald and The Leader, papers that would later merge in the 1980s, gave strict orders to their reporters to bury coverage of the protests and were not encouraged to cover the protests at all. They were told to “play down the movement” and perhaps it would simply fade away. This was a stance that many southern newspapers took, thus censoring history. Some would question the racial attitudes of the late Fred Wachs, the publisher who set the policy on excluding the protests.

They were told to “play down the movement” and perhaps it would simply fade away.

Among the leaders in the protests was retired teacher Audrey Ross Grevious. Grevious reported in an article by James Dao that she attended an NAACP convention in New York City around 1960, and on her return train trip home became agitated because she and other blacks were required to move to a rear car once the train crossed the Mason-Dixon Line. Although she grew up in the segregated South, the reality of segregation finally hit home. She decided to organize demonstrations when she reached home. Grevious, over a period of several years, organized weekend sit-ins at lunch counters, movie theaters, and hotels. In retaliation, whites who opposed integration dumped garbage and other waste on her lawn. Later, a patron in a local restaurant threw a beverage on one of her suits; she kept the suit as a “soiled souvenir.” Negative reactions to her efforts continued; for several hours, the manager of one lunch counter swung a chain barrier into her legs and left her with chronic pain that lasted for years. Following the behavior of demonstrators elsewhere, Grevious refused to move.

The demonstrators were persistent with their efforts because they wanted to draw attention to the depths of segregation in Lexington. Unfortunately, the press published stories primarily to document the arrest of demonstrators, not the depths of their endurance. Among the published photographs available about the protests are those showing over 200 demonstrators marching in a solemn single file down Main Street to agitate against segregated stores and restaurants. Others show protesters on the steps of Fayette County courthouse; their heads are bowed in prayer, and a lone young lady is seated at a lunch counter that refuses to serve her. The Lexington sit-ins are important as much for the efforts of protesters as for the censorship that the local white press placed on African American history.

Jessie Carney Smith