Post #3 of 3
Year after year, Greensboro NC residents drive or walk by the “Woolworth’s Building” on Elm Street, where the most significant period in the city’s history took place. And like residents of many cities, some of us take what should be our pride and joy, for granted. We don’t visit, we don’t discuss, we don’t celebrate, we don’t brush up on our facts.
I’m not only pointing my finger at everyone else; I myself am guilty of this paying too little attention. For whatever reason, for whatever lame excuse, I have not pulled my weight to support The International Civil Rights Center and Museum and its incredible legacy for our city.
My wake up call came last March when I was in Washington, DC and finally was able to spend an afternoon at the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture. The Museum blew me away. As I began the self guided tour in the Museum’s “basement” and worked my way up through journeys from Africa by sea and early years of enslavement and “freedom” and Jim Crow and a few bright spots along the way despite every obstacle imaginable…I reached the lunch counter gallery. And there it was: the section of the Greensboro Woolworth’s lunch counter that had been gifted to the Museum.
And the importance of this artifact stopped me in my tracks. What happened in Greensboro for a few months in 1960 is considered monumental.I had to realize this by traveling away from home and through the eyes of the most eminent museum historians and curators. It’s a fact and it will always be so! And although I can take no credit for what happened in February through July of 1960, I can certainly help keep the legacy alive through conversations, sharing photos, contributing donations and generally being supportive of the efforts being made to keep this history in its proper place, which is front and center. I promised myself to do better, much better.
As I reluctantly began my departure from one of the most impactful history museums in the world, I decided to peak into the museum cafe, brightly named the “Sweet Home Cafe.” And there, a huge mural covering the entire back wall of the cafe, were four of my personal heroes, The Greensboro Four, taking us back to a time when African Americans could not be served equally at lunch counters, movie theaters, hotels, and other accommodations. And it wasn’t THAT long ago.
Weekend driving trips are second only to learning everything about what is in my own back yard. Greensboro and the Triad are growing and changing and renewing in a way that no one would have predicted two decades ago.