Thursday was a big day for anybody of any color who believes in equality for all. Abraham Lincoln's birthday was 200 years ago Thursday. The birth of the NAACP, 100 years ago Thursday.
And the birth of the sit-ins over racial segregation in Rock Hill that changed the city, the South and America. Sit-ins organized for the day that meant so much to the emancipation of blacks and the fight by blacks for equality.
Feb. 12, 1960.
Segregation's death in Rock Hill -- an egg fertilized by the boycott of segregated Rock Hill buses from 1957 through 1959 -- was born before Rock Hill's amazed eyes on Feb. 12, 1960. The parents of that birth are both black teens of that era who demanded equality and older blacks in groups, including Rock Hill's NAACP who demanded equality and lent the wisdom of their years to the cause.
Every one of us, black, white, red, all colors, 49 years later, are proud godparents of that birth.
Many black people -- students from Friendship Junior College and others, including a few white Catholics -- decided that Feb. 12 was the day that the all-white lunch counters would get black customers. Planning meetings of a steering committee were held for months, every Monday at noon, at the Trade Street home of Rock Hill's NAACP president, the late Rev. Cecil Ivory.
"I remember the planning, and the first sit-ins, very vividly," said Dr. Horace Goggins, a retired dentist who was then secretary of the NAACP branch and a member of the steering committee. "The Feb. 12 date of Lincoln's birth, and the NAACP anniversary, were very important. Symbolic."
Around 11 a.m. on Feb. 12, 1960, at McCrory's and Woolworth's discount stores and two nearby drug store lunch counters, all on Main Street, about 100 black people sat down to eat.
Not a single black person was served so much as a hard roll or a glass of water. The lunch counters closed down rather than serve blacks.
But Main Street and downtown changed forever as the blacks sat down and other blacks watched. And some whites who believed segregation was right, that it was the way their world should be, threw into the cold wind insults and taunts and those names for blacks that are so hurtful and shameful.
"There was a crowd, confusion," Goggins said. "The hecklers were calling us names."
A famous picture was taken that afternoon, in the aftermath of the sit-ins down the street, of a black man hit with an egg. The man who threw that egg, Elwin Wilson, is still alive. Wilson has admitted in recent articles in The Herald to being part of the white crowd that heckled the black protesters. He apologized.
But no apologies came Feb. 12, 1960. One black man was knocked off a stool by a young white man. This was the time of the scare of communism in America, and the front-page headline in The Evening Herald screamed in huge letters: "Negro youths invade lunch counters."
As if these youths were Russians and had tanks. Or even guns.
All they had was the weapon of righteousness.
And courage, and the guidance of men such Ivory, Goggins and the Rev. Robert Toatley, then treasurer of the Rock Hill NAACP.
"That day was a very important day in this city's history," said Juanita Toatley, widow of Robert Toatley and an active NAACP member.
Rock Hill protests and demonstrations would continue throughout 1960 and 1961.
In 1961, Feb. 12 would be important again. Almost two weeks earlier, some protesters from Friendship refused to get up from a sit-in and were arrested. They became the Friendship 9 and went to jail for 30 days.
On Feb. 12, 1961 -- Lincoln's birthday, the NAACP birthday and now the one-year anniversary of the first sit-in in Rock Hill -- more than 600 people that included those from Rock Hill, students from Tennessee and others from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee that fought segregation all over the South -- went to the York County prison farm where the nine men were on the chain gang.
The black marchers were denied access and had to park at a church more than a mile away. They parked and walked. They sang. They held hands.
"It was really a show of support for what those men were in jail for," Goggins recalled.
Those men were in jail for being black.
York's John Spratt, since 1983 a member of Congress, went to that prison on Feb. 12, 1961, with his father, who was then a York County attorney. The potential for trouble was obvious: The local prosecutor was on hand, too, and so many cops.
John Spratt is now 66, but what he saw that day changed his life. Spratt, later as student body president at Davidson College, invited black protesters to speak, and he marched with blacks, arm in arm down city streets, demanding equality.
Spratt saw countless state troopers on Feb. 12, 1961. All white. He saw black prisoners in jail for the crime of being black and wanting to be treated with dignity. And he saw other black people, hundreds peaceful and filled with hope, converge on the prison farm to support those in jail.
"I will never forget it," Spratt said of that day, when he was 18.
Groups of black students also went on the morning of Feb. 12, 1961, to five all-white churches in Rock Hill, for a "kneel-in." The blacks were allowed in three houses of God and barred from two others.
It took some years, but segregation finally died in Rock Hill. It died at lunch counters and churches. It died at schools and on buses. It died with a stake through its dark, ugly heart.
I asked Goggins, now 79 and still a member of the NAACP, if Feb. 12 is an important day. Especially Thursday, as the nation celebrated Lincoln at age 200 and the NAACP at 100.
"February the 12th meant a lot to us in those days. It means a lot now," Goggins said. "February the 12th in those years, 1960 and 1961, changed Rock Hill forever."
