Special to the AmNews
Last Wednesday, Jan. 28, a South Carolina judge, John Hayes, vacated the 54-year-old convictions of a group of Black civil rights activists who defied that era’s racist segregation laws.
The same lawyer who represented them in 1961 stood beside them, and the judge who cleared their names is the nephew of the judge, Bill Hayes, who originally sentenced them.
“I can’t rewrite history, but I can right history,” commented Hayes as he signed the order reversing the convictions.
After being refused service for many months, 14 young Black male civil rights activists, nine of them students at Friendship College in Rock Hill, S.C., staged a sit-in Jan. 31, 1961, at McCrory’s, an all-Caucasian luncheonette.
“This was carefully orchestrated,” Clarence Graham revealed. “No, no, this was planned to the T. We had to because our lives were at stake.”
“Jail, no bail!” became their slogan.
After refusing to pay the $100 bail, Graham, David Williamson, James Wells, Willie McCleod, Willie Thomas “Dub” Massey, John Gaines, Thomas Gaither, Mack Workman and Robert McCullough, were convicted of trespassing and sentenced to 30 days hard labor at the York County Prison Camp.
“We just got tired of being second-class citizens,” Graham said. “We were often kicked, spit on, cursed out.”
Four others were members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, including Charlotte lawyer Charles Jones, and one was a Congress of Racial Equality field secretary.
Three years ago, Rock Hill native Kimberly Johnson discovered their story.
“When I asked them what made you do it, they said they wanted freedom more,” Johnson shared. “And when we talk about freedom, it wasn’t just going to McCrory’s to sit down and eat … we are talking about the right to choose, the right to walk down the street without getting spit on. That’s freedom, and that’s what they wanted.”
She convinced them to take their next step on “Freedom Road.”
“It was like dragging a chain behind you,” Williamson said. “You always had it back there in the memory, and any time you would fill out an application, you always had to tell them and you wondered if it would affect if you got a position or not.”
“I think it was a badge of honor,” Massey added. “It was. I think all of us realized that we had tapped into something.”
Last Wednesday, Hayes agreed that their self-determining act to stand up to racial injustice was not a crime.
“There is only one reason these men were arrested … and that is because they were Black,” prosecutor Kevin Brackett proclaimed at a packed hearing that was attended by surviving members of the group. “It was wrong then, it’s wrong today.”
The “Friendship Nine” became the first U.S. civil rights protesters to choose to serve jail time for sitting at an all-Caucasian lunch counter, helping to start the “jail, no bail” strategy that became a model for other activists.
“It was a moment where the circle came fully around,” Jones said. “Here was a white judge, whose uncle had sentenced us, and a prosecutor fully admitting—and apologizing—that what the state had done was wrong, and they wanted to make it right.”
Hayes concluded, “This was not an isolated event. There are more opportunities for other communities to do something like this. Whether they’ll make an effort to right their history is up to them, but I think it would be very, very appropriate.”
