INC NEWS - Group wants marker at sit-in site (Herald-Sun)

[John Schelp]

folks,

FYI, below is an article from today's Herald-Sun.

We've received encouraging responses from the Board of
Education, City Council and the Board of County
Commissioners.

~John

****

Group wants marker at sit-in site
By Carolyn Rickard, Herald-Sun, 11 Nov 2007

A group of citizens is asking for the Board of
Education's support for putting a state historic
marker at the site of the 1957 Royal Ice Cream Parlor
Sit-in. 

The group, led by activist R. Kelly Bryant, plans to
ask the school board Thursday to pass a resolution
supporting such a marker at the site in downtown
Durham. The group, which includes Virginia Williams,
who participated in the sit-in, plans to appeal an
earlier decision by the Highway Marker Advisory
Committee not to place a marker on the site. 

The group also includes Eddie Davis, a candidate for
state superintendent and president of the North
Carolina Association of Educators, and local activist
John Schelp. 

Feeling official proclamations of support will enhance
their chances with the state committee, they also plan
to ask the Board of County Commissioners and City
Council to support the marker. 

In 2003, citizens petitioned the committee for a
historic marker at the site, but the committee denied
it, saying that the event did not rise to statewide
social significance enough to mark it. However, group
members said, local support has risen since then. 

Also, they said, historians have recently placed
greater emphasis on the importance of the sit-in,
which some considered the first such protest. 

Some 1,500 markers have been erected across the state,
with 10 to 12 added each year. 

On June 23, 1957, seven black citizens walked into the
Royal Ice Cream Parlor, once at the corner of Down and
N. Roxboro streets, and sat in the white section. They
were arrested. Though it's unclear whether it was the
first such sit-in, it is credited as one of the
precursors of the modern Civil Rights movement in
North Carolina. 

School board chairwoman Minnie Forte-Brown could not
be reached for comment. The board meets at 6:30 p.m.
Thursday at the Fuller Building, 511 Cleveland St.