INC NEWS - Historic Durham sit-in marker will make debut (Monday at 6PM)

[John Schelp]

Historic Durham sit-in marker will make debut 
By Jim Wise, Durham News, 21 June 2008

A state historic marker commemorating the June 23, 1957, Royal Ice Cream sit-in gets its unveiling Monday at 6 p.m.

Virginia Williams, one of the demonstrators in Durham's first sit-in for civil rights, will do the unveiling, in the Union Baptist Church sanctuary at 904 N. Roxboro St.

Union Baptist owns the site of the now-demolished Royal Ice Cream parlor, the northeast corner of the Roxboro-Dowd St. intersection near downtown. The marker will be permanently erected there after the church's new school building is complete.

The state Highway Historical Marker Advisory Committee approved the marker in December, after repeated requests by Durham residents, in particular R. Kelly Bryant Jr., a retired N.C. Mutual Insurance manager who is an authority on the city's black history.

Fifty-one years ago Monday, six black youngsters and minister Douglas Moore were refused service and arrested for trespass when they took seats in Royal Ice Cream's whites-only section. Their convictions were upheld after appeal to the state Supreme Court.

The Royal Ice Cream demonstration was only the second civil-rights sit-in in North Carolina.

It followed a July 1954 action at Charlotte's Douglas Airport restaurant, and preceded the famed Greensboro Woolworth's sit-in by almost three years.