Sixty years ago this month, four Black college students sat down at the lunch counter at the Woolworth store in Greensboro, North Carolina, and did not leave after they were refused service. The next day, more students participated in the protest against segregation, and the sit-in grew and continued for weeks. Charles Bess worked at Woolworth as a busboy, and was caught in a news photograph of the protest. Sixty years later, he tells the story of that protest from his point of view.
After his shift was over, the four had gone, and he had finished his closing duties, Bess caught a cab home and remembers telling the driver all about the young men who came into the store that day. As soon as he got home, he told his sister, and then his brother-in-law.
“I felt like I wanted to tell everybody,” he says as he waves his arms up and down. “I was excited about it. It was a very exciting week.”
Bess says that working for a company that kept whites and black separated — not only behind the scenes, but publicly — felt complicated at times.
“I did have to wrestle with it,” he says. “I was on the other side, being paid by a company that was keeping me going, but all the same time, I was kind of on their side. I was on this side, but I was rejoiced by the people on the other side. I felt like there needed to be a change.”
On July 25th, 1960, Bess was one of four Black Woolworth employees who were invited to sit down at the store's lunch counter and enjoy a meal, ushering in the store's new desegregated policy. Read his story at The Bitter Southerner. -via Metafilter