The Movement Lives

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Civil Rights; Higher Education; African American Leadership; African Americans; Civil Rights Legislation; Minority Groups; Minority Group Students; Racial Segregation; Voting; Activism

1557-5411

On the night of Feb. 8, 1960, J. Charles Jones, then a student of religion and psychology at Johnson C. Smith University, knew instinctively what it was he needed to do for his generation. He first met with a handful of other classmates and friends, letting them know what he had just learned on the radio--other Black students in neighboring Greensboro, N.C. had begun staging lunch counter sit-ins at the five and dime. The next day, Jones told them, he planned to do the same. Dressed in his "Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes," and with some "sweet water" dabbed under his arms, an anxious but determined Jones was planning to make his way alone to Woolworth's in downtown Charlotte, N.C. He was going to order a meal and integrate the all-White lunch counter. But before he stepped off the campus and into the fray, nearly 300 Smith students turned out to join Jones in what was the beginning of a quiet riot and boycott that soon shut down Charlotte's businesses, and in just short of a year, pried them open to Black patrons. Jones, an emphatic Howard University-trained attorney, with an ever-ready rhythm and rhyme, and nimble recollections, was one of the faces and voices city visitors to the 2012 Democratic National Convention saw and heard when they turned on local media. His was among the stories Johnson C. Smith students told of life and residents in Charlotte's historic West End community. The author describes how Johnson C. Smith University students follow in the footsteps of civil rights activists.

ERIC

2013

EJ999713