---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 02 Mar 2002 12:54:19 -0800
From: radtimes <resist@best.com>
Subject: Sit-ins Omitted From the History Books
Sit-ins Omitted From the History Books
by Dr. Ron Walters
NNPA Columnist
February 28, 2002
<http://www.blackpressusa.com/Op-Ed/speaker.asp?SID=16&NewsID 09>
Let me express a point of personal pride about the fact
that I am originally from Wichita, Kan., a city on the
midwestern plains that has a claim as the site of the
first of the post-World War II northern sit-ins that
began the movement in 1958 before Greensboro, N.C.
Earlier this month, I attended a conference in Wichita
organized by a local professor to celebrate the Civil
Rights Movement in the Mid-west. Now, with all of the
emphasis on the South, you wouldn't know there was such
a thing. But there was and there is now a book out
about it, "Dissent in Wichita," by Gretchen Eick.
On July 5, 1958, I was among several youngsters who
comprised the NAACP youth group and went downtown to
Dockum Drugs, a store in the old Rexall chain. We asked
for service and when we were refused, we promptly sat
anyway. Thus, began a sit-in that continued until early
August, when the store manager came out one day and
announced that the store was losing money and that
service would take place on a non-racial basis from
then on.
A few weeks later, another sit-in began in Oklahoma
City, Okla., a few hundred miles south. This one lasted
through the rest of the year and into 1959 and spread
to other cities in Oklahoma. And whereas few local or
national media would write about the 1958 Wichita sit-
in, the Oklahoma demonstrations were widely publicized
by local and some national media outlets.
In fact, at the 1960 national NAACP convention, Martin
Luther King Jr. gave awards to the NAACP youth members
who had participated in the movement before the
Greensboro, N.C. students went into action.
Those of us in the NAACP youth movement were the last
to be surprised when sit-ins began in the South. One in
1957 involved Washington, D.C is Rev. Douglass Moore in
Durham, N.C. The legal case that grew out of it became
known as the Royal Ice Cream case because the sit-in
occurred in at an ice cream parlor, not a lunch
counter. Those who had begun this sit-in were members
of the NAACP youth group, including Ezell Blair Jr.,
Joe McNeil and others later involved in the 1960
Greensboro sit-in.
Last Sept. 7, the Wichita NAACP youth group presented a
musical based on the 1958 sit-in, "Standing Up in the
Heartland," which featured the "Wichita 10," as we
were called. It was held at the old Orpheum theater
downtown, which was segregated in 1958. Blacks had to
sit up in the balcony rather than on the main floor
with Whites. So, this city remembered its history in
the civil rights struggle if no one else did.
It was with a mixture of pride and strangeness that I
sat in the audience watching a young man sing and play
my character and those of the rest of us, our parents,
Black leaders and the Whites who opposed us then. But
the most satisfying feeling was knowing that some
youths in this generation were being socialized into
the deeper meaning of what it was like to be Black. As
such, they might catch the spirit to continue to push
for our future.
Why were the Wichita, Oklahoma City and the Durham sit-
ins overlooked? Some of it had to do with the way in
which major newspapers covered the story at the time.
The editors felt that it was a Southern story, that
race problems in the North were mild by comparison.
Also, the story of the movement has been generally told
from the SNCC/SCLC point of view, not the NAACP.
Much of this came back to mind recently when my
Leadership Institute sponsored a presentation by James
Foreman, who was a leader of the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the 1960s. Foreman
told us of his beginnings in struggle in Chicago as a
young lad and how he became involved with SNCC. He told
the young people in the audience that they should have
the courage to change their environment if they
perceive that it is negative and a barrier to their
growth and development. He also said, in answer to a
question by another presenter, Dr. Cedric Smith of
Hobart and William Smith Colleges, that direct action
is still needed today, and that young people today have
at their disposal the tools of more education, planning
and modern technology.
Given the situation for Black America today, we still
need a movement. But as James Foreman suggests, it will
be up to the new generation to start one.
--------
Dr. Ron Walters is the Distinguished Leadership
Scholar, Professor of Government and Politics at the
University of Maryland and co-author of "African
American Leadership."
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