INC NEWS - State recognizes 1957 Durham sit-in (AP, NBC, ABC, CBS, NPR, etc)

[John Schelp]

Yesterday's decision by the State commission to
recognize Durham's 1957 sit-in was covered by the
Triangle's ABC, NBC, and CBS stations, as well as the
Charlotte Observer, National Public Radio, Herald-Sun,
Associated Press, Winston-Salem Journal, Fayetteville
Observer, News & Observer, WLOS-TV News-13 (Western
Carolina), WXII News (Greensboro & Winston-Salem),
Times-News (Blue Ridge & Hendersonville), and WAVY-TV
News (Norfolk, VA). 

Tune into 91.5 today at noon to hear about the
decision on "The State of Things" (NC Public Radio).

Below is some of the coverage.

~John

****

Former Ice Cream Shop To Receive Historical Marker
Dec 17, 2007, NBC-TV

RALEIGH, N.C. -- State leaders have unanimously
approved a request to have the site of a Durham ice
cream shop sit-in recognized as an historical site.

In June 1957, seven African-Americans staged a sit-in
at the Royal Ice Cream parlor on Roxboro street to
protest segregation.

The ice cream shop is now gone. But within the next
six months, an historical highway marker will go up to
mark the significance of the site in the Civil Rights
movement.

Virginia Williams, a participant in the sit-in, said
the event needs to be remembered. 

"We knew that once we got in there. Whoever was in
front -- and I don't remember who was in front -- was
going to just push the door open like the waiter did,"
she said. "And keep on to the other side and take our
seats. And that's exactly what we did." 

Williams says she saw the impact of the afternoon
protest.

"I think it helped. It really did," Williams said. "It
got people thinking. They started talking."

Ironically, years later, an African-American
businessman bought the Royal Ice cream building. 

He opened a food store of his own.

The building has since been demolished. A church next
door plans to put a school at the former building's
location.

Watch broadcast on NBC...
http://www.nbc17.com/midatlantic/ncn/news.apx.-content-articles-NCN-2007-12-17-0038.html

Watch broadcast on ABC...
http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/media?id=5841238

****

State panel says 'yes' to marker for Durham sit-in
site (Charlotte Observer, 17 Dec 2007)

(Associated Press) A North Carolina highway marker
will commemorate the sit-in at Royal Ice Cream in
Durham that occurred three years before the better
known protest in Greensboro.

The Historical Marker Advisory Committee agreed Monday
to put a marker at the site of the sit-in that
occurred in June 1957 when seven blacks sat in the
whites-only section of the ice cream parlor.

The protesters were arrested, charged and fined.

Three years later, in 1960, a sit-in occurred at
Woolworth - a protest that's recognized at the
Smithsonian.

The Durham marker is scheduled to go up in spring 2008
at the former location of Royal Ice Cream.

In 2002, the committee had different members and
turned down a request for the marker, saying the
Durham sit-in wasn't as significant statewide as the
one in Greensboro.

North Carolina has more than 1,500 historic markers,
but the one in Durham will be just the fourth that
commemorates a civil rights event.

****

History catches up: Civil rights protest finally gets
its due
By Eric Ferreri, News & Observer, 18 Dec 2007

Caption: John Schelp, Virginia Williams and state Sen.
Floyd McKissick Jr., all of Durham, appear pleased
with the unanimous vote of an advisory committee
approving a highway marker for the Royal Ice Cream Co.
sit-in in Durham. 

DURHAM -- The vacant lot at the northeast corner of
Dowd and Roxboro streets doesn't look like much. But
an ice cream parlor once stood on that spot, and more
than 50 years ago, seven bold African-Americans made
history.

The June 23, 1957, sit-in there didn't attract the
attention of a similar protest nearly three years
later at a Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro.
But on Monday, nine history professors decided it was
significant enough to earn official state recognition.
So after five decades and two attempts by Durham
activists, the state next year will place an official
North Carolina highway marker on the site, denoting
the location of the Royal Ice Cream Co. sit-in.

It will be just the fourth dedicated to the civil
rights movement.

Virginia Williams was 20 when she took part in the
protest. She recalled Monday walking in the back door
because she knew she wouldn't make it through the
front before taking a seat in the white section.

Williams, now 70, spoke eloquently in support of the
highway marker Monday, her words helping to sway the
highway historical marker advisory committee to
unanimously approve the marker. The committee, made up
of history professors from across the state, assembled
in a cramped room at the Office of Archives and
History in Raleigh and listened intently. Members
asked just a few questions before unanimously
approving the marker.

In doing so, they reversed a 2002 decision by the same
committee, which, with entirely different membership,
declared that the Durham sit-in didn't have enough
statewide historical significance.

"I am overwhelmed," Williams said after the brief
hearing. "It highlights what we did. Even though it's
50 years later ... I'm delighted."

That 2002 committee and previous versions had held
that the Greensboro sit-in, which is memorialized at
the Smithsonian Institution and taught in history
books, ought to stand as representative of all such
sit-ins. It received its highway marker in 1980.

The current committee took an alternate view.

"I think it's significant because it does illustrate
the civil rights movement before Greensboro," said
committee member Jeff Broadwater, a history professor
at Barton College in Wilson. "Sometimes we think the
civil rights movement started with Greensboro."

Durham activists have long argued that the Durham
event, coming 2 1/2 years before the Greensboro
sit-in, laid much of the groundwork for future civil
rights protests.

State Sen. Floyd McKissick Jr., a Durham native whose
father helped represent the group after its members
were arrested, argued Monday that the sit-in directly
led to other such protests.

"It was the seed that helped fertilize all the
activity in the Piedmont of North Carolina," he said.
"There had to be a catalyst; it was bold, it was
defiant, but most importantly, it was the start."

The sit-in was led by the Rev. Douglas Moore, a
28-year-old Durham minister who took the group to the
ice cream parlor, which was in a black section of
town. It had an entrance for whites on Dowd Street and
an entrance reading "Colored Only" on the Roxboro
Street side. Inside, a partition separated the two
sections.

Members of the group sat in booths on the white side
and refused to leave. They were arrested and charged
with trespassing. The headline in the Durham Morning
Herald the next day read "Integration Bid Is Made At
Soda Bar; Seven Negroes Cited to Court on Trespass
Count."

Moore's explanation to the newspaper: "We went to the
white side because it was more suitable to our group
-- larger and with better service. The bigger
percentage of patronage at the Royal is Negro, and for
this reason alone there should be no racial barrier."

Each protester was found guilty and fined $10 plus
court costs. The case was appealed to the state
Supreme Court, which upheld the charges and fines. The
U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case.

Slightly more than 1,500 historic markers dot the
state's highways, each denoting a person, place or
event that this committee has deemed of statewide
significance. The committee meets twice a year and
considers between 10 and 20 proposals, often granting
fewer than half those requests.

MARKER TO GO ON VIEW NEXT YEAR

Durham's newest historic highway marker will cost
$1,350 and will be unveiled sometime next spring or
early summer.

It will read: "Segregation protest at an ice cream
parlor on this site, June 23, 1957, led to court case
testing dual racial facilities." 

PHOTOS
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/durham/story/835792.html

****

Sit-in site will get state marker
By Carolyn Rickard, Herald-Sun, 18 Dec 2007 

Fifty years ago, Virginia Williams and six others
walked into the back door of the Royal Ice Cream
Parlor, a shop at the corner of Dowd and Roxboro
streets smack dab in the middle of a black
neighborhood. 

Some say the events that unfolded -- group members,
who were black, refused to leave the white section,
and were arrested -- sparked the Civil Rights movement
across North Carolina, including the more famous
sit-in at a Greensboro lunch counter several years
later. 

On Monday, a state committee acknowledged the
significance of the Durham sit-in by finally agreeing
to put an official highway marker at the site where
the Royal Ice Cream Parlor once stood. 

"There are cases people don't know about that have
historical significance," said Lenwood Davis, a
professor from Winston-Salem State University and a
member of the committee. "Sort of footnotes in history
-- things that we don't know about are coming to
life." 

The committee of professors and historians meets twice
a year to hash through 10 to 20 requests for the
$1,250 signs. Since 1935, when the program began, some
1,400 of the gray signs with raised black letters have
been erected -- at least one in every county. 

However, one on the site of the ice cream parlor has
been noticeably absent, a group of activists,
including Williams, contend. The state denied such a
marker five years ago, saying the protest didn't have
the same statewide impact as the Greensboro sit-ins. 

When the committee unanimously agreed to place a
marker Monday, Williams immediately stood up. She said
she knows of two other living members of the original
seven. 

"I will be calling them tonight," Williams said. "This
is deserving." 

Williams said originally, eight people walked through
the back door of Royal Ice Cream, though one left
after being asked to. They sat in the white section,
and, when asked to leave, simply ordered ice cream.
The group members were arrested and ordered to pay a
$10 fine plus court fees. Later appeals upheld the
charge. 

"We could have picked from any establishment,"
Williams said. "They were all segregated. The reason
we chose this one was it was located in the heart of a
black community." 

North Carolina Sen. Floyd McKissick remembers the
sit-in vividly. It was a few blocks from his home --
and he, along with various experts and historians,
view it as the catalyst that started protests across
the state. 

"That particular establishment, in that particular
place in time ... was symbolic in Durham with the
fight for civil rights," McKissick told the committee.
"It epitomized the fight." 

The marker likely will be ordered in February, and
will go up in April. 

--- 

Here is what the marker for the Royal Ice Cream Parlor
sit-in will say: 

"Segregation protest at an ice cream parlor on this
site, June 23, 1957, led to court case testing dual
racial facilities." 

****

Today at noon on "The State of Things" at North
Carolina Public Radio (91.5)...

Royal Ice Cream Sit-in: Yesterday a state committee
approved the placement of an official North Carolina
highway marker at the site of the 1957 Royal Ice Cream
Co. sit-in. The vote reversed a 2002 decision which
claimed the site didn't have enough statewide
significance to warrant a marker. Mike Hill, Research
Supervisor at the N.C. Office of Archives and History,
joins host Frank Stasio to explain the reversal.

****