Columbia Sit-ins, 1960
Students & Governor Wrangle
McCrory’s, a five-and-dime in downtown Columbia, South Carolina, initially closed rather than accept sit-ins at its lunch counter. Photo courtesy of Richland Library, Columbia, South Carolina.
March 2, 1960, morning
About 500 black students gather. They attend Benedict College and Allen University, side-by-side historically black schools bordering Columbia’s Taylor and Harden streets. In sleet and rain about 200 march to Main Street, a mile away. Downtown, they walk in and out of stores.
March 2, 1960, lunchtime
A few dozen students enter F.W. Woolworth Company. The manager has already closed all but two lunch counter sections. The students briefly sit and read. When students enter S.H. Kress & Company, some counter seats are roped off, the others occupied. They leave. No one is physically assaulted, but white onlookers taunt the students.
See the students sitting at the Woolworth counter and standing outside Kress. Footage is from the Moving Image Research Collections (MIRC) at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC.
March 3, 1960
About 300 students march downtown. They sing as they walk through gauntlets of white onlookers. This time, law enforcement expects them. The students visit downtown variety and drug stores, two department stores, and the Greyhound Bus Depot, where they sit in the whites-only waiting room.
See students lining up to enter the whites-only main entrance of the depot. Photos from The State Newspaper Photograph Archive can be found in the Walker Digital Collections at Richland Library, Columbia, SC.
March 4, 1960
Simon Bouie, president of the Allen Student Movement Association, and Talmadge Neal, president of the Benedict Student Movement Association, announce that they have suspended demonstrations. They say the students met their goals, which include protesting “unfair, inequitable, discriminatory treatment” in public spaces and rebutting white officials’ claim that black citizens accept or even desire segregation.
See photos and information on Allen University and Benedict College, which are included in the National Register on Historic Places.
March 5, 1960, before dawn
White youths drive the street’s bordering Allen and Benedict, throwing bottles and bricks. Allen University students report a burning cross. Before 4 a.m., young black men who are armed with sticks and stones rush parked cars at the segregated Mac’s Drive-In, across from the colleges on Taylor Street. Drivers of two cars report broken windows and a windshield. A three-column, front-page headline, “Negroes Invade White Drive-In” competes in Columbia’s afternoon paper with a munitions ship explosion in Cuba. Fifteen Allen students are later arrested for disorderly conduct, and four acknowledge rallying students because “The whites are coming.” No white vandal is arrested or charged.
March 5, 1960
On Saturday, about 50 student leaders from around the state meet in Columbia and found the South Carolina Student Movement Association, naming David Carter the president. An Air Force veteran who served in the Korean War, Carter has graduated from Benedict with a bachelor’s in social studies and remains to earn a bachelor of divinity at the J.J. Starks School of Theology. The city manager issues a statement declaring further demonstrations will not be tolerated.
March 10, 1960
Gov. Ernest F. Hollings sends the chief of the State Law Enforcement Division (SLED) to insist Benedict and Allen presidents prohibit student protests. Hollings promises arrests based on “a threat to peace and good order” if students go through with a prayer pilgrimage to the State House on March 12. He claims proof of “outside, selfish, antagonist groups” influencing the students and declares he will not allow “explosive situations to develop in South Carolina.”
See portions of Hollings’ statement from MIRC footage.
March 11, 1960
Carter announces the prayer pilgrimage cancelled. He says the governor has forgotten “the laws of democracy, if he ever knew them,” and the students are not afraid of filling jails. He says, “The only reason we will not go through with our pilgrimage students is because we are law abiding citizens and not hoodlums and gangsters who will have to be met with brass and guns.” Sit-ins continue without arrests. On the Benedict campus, students hold a funeral for Jim Crow.
March 14, 1960
Neal and Bouie lead students to Eckerd Drug Store, expecting to hold a mass sit-in. However, only Neal and Bouie end up inside. They take seats. Some white patrons stand up; some bang knives and forks on the counter. The assistant police chief arrives and arrests them. The two are charged with breach of peace; Bouie is also charged with resisting arrest.
See their arrests: MIRC footage of Bouie shoved into an unmarked car, Neal frisked, and a reporter marched out, as Carter, in a plaid shirt and a sport coat, observes.
March 15, 1960
Students sit-in at Taylor Street Pharmacy, Kress, and the Union Bus Depot. At Kress, the manager closes the counter, and the students leave. At the depot, police take the students in for questioning then release them. However, on Taylor Street reporters and law enforcement officers await them. Carter leads inside Charles F. Barr, Johnny M. Clark, Richard M. Counts, and Milton Greene. They sit. All are arrested, charged with trespass and breach of peace, and jailed.
See Jet magazine’s editorial cartoons on sit-ins and civil rights, pages 8 and 9.
March 16, 1960, after midnight
Carter posts bond early; the rest are bonded out after midnight and treated to an ALBEN Restaurant dinner by the Rev. I DeQuincey Newman, field director for the state NAACP conference. The Columbia protest aligns with those of students in Rock Hill, Orangeburg, and Sumter.
See the ALBEN dining room and read about owner Ozie Jackson Sr.
March 26, 1960
The KKK burns two crosses outside the city. Bouie and Neal are found guilty; Neal is fined $100, Bouie $200. The judge cites an Alexandria, Virginia, lawsuit: A black IRS agent sued after being refused service at a Howard Johnson’s Restaurant. The Appeals Court says restaurants may deal with different people in different ways.
Read Charles E. Williams v. Howard Johnson’s Restaurant, 268 F. 2d 845 (4th Cir. 1959).
March 27, 1960
About 1,500 high school and college students meet at Sidney Park Christian Methodist Episcopal Church (CME). The Student Movement Association, which called the meeting, announces that the group will discuss previous demonstrations and decide what’s next.
See Sidney Park CME.
April 28, 1960
Carter and Moses Javis of Allen University deliver a letter to Mayor Lester Bates, putting him on notice that the demonstrators were denied equal protection of the law during previous protests and that black South Carolinians continue to be denied access to the best libraries and dining at certain stores. About three dozen students demonstrate outside City Hall. The protesters then visit several downtown stores. Seven take seats in the Richland County Public Library after being refused service. They are referred to the “separate but equal” Waverly Branch, housed in a former church and lacking an adequate roof, library books, lighting, and shelving.
See the Waverly Branch in 1959. Compare the interiors of the main library and the Waverly Branch.
May 5, 1960
About 30 Allen and Benedict students march to the State House, where legislators debate school-funding changes to the appropriations bill, intended to keep schools segregated. The students are met by the chief of SLED, who tells them they cannot demonstrate on the public grounds. They walk a mile and a half farther to join about 50 more protesters in front of the Governor’s Mansion. The number of law enforcement officers almost matches the number of demonstrators, who picket and sing “We Shall Not Be Moved.” No one is arrested.
July 20-21, 1960
Students leave town for summer jobs; the number of sit-ins diminishes. On Wednesday, a few students sit at a downtown lunch counter without arrest; on Thursday, four students stage a sit-in early in the day. A dozen later sit at lunch counters throughout downtown while police watch. In two stores, workers have roped off the counters; in one, students sit and then servers close the counter.
Read the National Register’s overview of segregation in Columbia, 1880-1960.
July 21, 1960
The South Carolina Advisory Committee on Civil Rights recommends, “By the appointment of a representative committee to negotiate differences between merchants and customers, a repetition of the sit-in demonstrations might be avoided and an avenue opened so that all our citizens might enjoy more fully the fruits of our democratic society.” The federal committee has three white and three black members. Hollings vehemently opposes biracial committees, saying, “There is no trust in South Carolina for a bi-racial committee or conference.”
October 18, 1960
Woolworth, Kress, W.T. Grant Company, and McCrory-McLellan Stores Corporation announce that lunch counters in 112 cities in 10 states -- Florida, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia – have desegregated since February. South Carolina’s lunch counters remain segregated.
December 13, 1960
On Tuesday, students sit at the McCrory’s lunch counter for a few minutes. Behind them about 30 white men line up but don’t speak while police watch.
December 14, 1960
On Wednesday, six male and one female student sit at McCrory’s lunch counter for three hours, beginning at noon. This time, white customers sit and eat.
December 15, 1960
On Thursday, six students sit at the Woolworth counter, three at Kress, and four at Silver’s variety store for about two hours without arrests. McCrory’s employees stack its counter with merchandise and cover the stools with paper bags to prevent another sit-in. Carter promises that sit-ins will continue.