Let justice roll down like water, righteousness like a mighty stream.
For our grandsons and granddaughters, remember to remember the dream.
Welcome to Songs and Stories from Home: Remembering the Dream. This week: Sit-ins
As I share this Podcast in June of 2020, we are at a moment in our nation’s history when we have a chance to take another step forward and make more real the ideal of what this country is founded on. That is the idea that we are all created equal and in the eyes of the creator are all equally precious. An idea and an ideal that could motivate us to rebuild this country on a foundation of racial justice, social justice, economic justice, earth justice, and restorative justice.
We can be encouraged to do that by other times in our history. For me none is more inspiring than the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950’s and 60’s. Those times saw moral leadership by a series of Presidents, Acts of Congress, and landmark Rulings by the Supreme Court. Most of all that moment included untold acts of courage by countless people trained and dedicated to non-violence and reported on by the Free Press.
Sit-ins at lunch counters were examples of peaceful protest and Civil disobedience. Asking for the right to order, receive, and pay for a meal. More than 60 years ago, on February 1st, 1960, days before similar sit-ins in Nashville began, four first year students at North Carolina State Agriculture and Technical State University took seats at the Greensboro Woolworths and refused to move. The next day 20 students – 50 more the day after – 300 the following day – on the 6th of February 1400 students voted to keep the protests going – and so they did – until on July 25th the store manager asked three black employees to order a meal at the counter. Six months after the Sit-ins began the first African-Americans were served a meal at that Woolworths. Today there’s a FEBRUARY ONE monument on campus at NC A&T and in 1993 a four seat portion of the lunch counter was made part of the Smithsonian Institution. Talk about being on the right side of this country’s history.
Please note toward the end of the video clip I mention the Civil Rights Movement of 1964. I should have said the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Let justice roll down like water, righteousness like a mighty stream.
For our grandsons and granddaughters, remember to remember the dream
