The Civil Rights Movement is largely ascribed to the period between the early 1950s and late 1960s, a period in which the fight for civil rights took the form of marches, freedom rides and other forms of protest.
In Martinsville, Thursday marks the anniversary of one of its civil rights demonstrations, a lunch counter sit-in inspired by one of the seminal moments of the era.
“I think it’s just a way to talk about public accommodations and it’s the most visible public accommodation,” said Naomi Hodge-Muse about the effectiveness of a lunch counter protest. “Hotel rooms are not as visible, a lunch counter is a visible thing that everybody can see that you’re not welcome.”
A native of Martinsville, Hodge-Muse is president of the Henry County-Martinsville Chapter of the NAACP. She was a small child at the time and doesn’t have much recollection of the events. But thinking back to that hot summer of 1961, she recalls one of the organizers, Sammie Redd.
“I remember how animated he was, telling people, ‘We’re not going in there, we’re boycotting, we’re not going in that store,’” Hodge-Muse said, adding that while her memory of the protest is limited, she does recollect the state of things in Martinsville.
“It was just like everywhere else in the South,” Hodge-Muse said. “Most people don’t realize that it was so endemic — it was just something that was. There wasn’t a big conversation; it was just something that was.”
Hodge-Muse said that just because the conditions were the same across the South didn’t mean things were easier for her or Martinsville’s other Black residents.
“You remember those [whites only] signs,” Hodge-Muse said. “You remember having to go through the back door to get a sandwich. What was much more onerous was when our fathers came back from fighting for this country, World War II. I remember my stepfather talking about when he got off the boat in Norfolk, the white soldiers went in and sat down in a restaurant with the MPs and he had to go through the back door to get a hot dog.”
These conditions led to the Martinsville lunch counter sit-in of Aug. 8, 1961. At the time, the now-defunct Black-owned newspaper Martinsville Tribune described it as the catalyst for desegregating lunch counters across Martinsville.
“On Tuesday, Aug. 8, 1961 about 3 p.m. four downtown stores finally opened their lunch counters to Negroes,” reads the opening sentence of the Tribune’s reporting.
A group of 10 Black men sat and ordered food at four downtown lunch counters: Wamplers Drug Store, Fagg’s Drug Store, Eagles and Woolworths. Employees served them without incident.
This was the culmination of a sustained effort that had begun earlier that year, the Tribune reported.
“Efforts had been made to desegregate the lunch counters since early in February, by picketing and boycotting,” the newspaper reported. “Eagles and Woolworths variety stores were the only two stores to be picketed by Negro youths, ministers and businessmen.”
The Aug. 8 sit-in marked the end of the months of picketing and boycotts.
No one was arrested, which stands in contrast to another lunch counter sit-in that happened the previous year just 40 miles away at the Woolworth’s in Greensboro, North Carolina.
There, what started as four college students who were refused service quickly ballooned into hundreds of demonstrators and dozens of arrests. Eventually, Woolworth’s relented, marking a turning point in the Civil Rights Movement and inspiring places like Martinsville to follow.
The Martinsville-Henry County Historical Society wants to commemorate this little-known event. The society has reporting from both the Tribune and the Martinsville Bulletin as part of its collection, and interested patrons can visit the society for copies to add to their personal collections.
It’s part of a temporary exhibit called “The Connected Community.”
The society was loaned the copy of the Tribune by Steve Isom of Bassett, according to Executive Director Holly Kozelsky.
Curious about possible differences in reporting between the Black-owned Tribune and the white-owned Martinsville Bulletin, Kozelsky sought out the Bulletin’s reporting.
The coverage in the two papers was similar. Both reported that the demonstration did not result in any arrests. While the Tribune reported that picketing happened at two of the stores, the Bulletin said it occurred at three.
The Bulletin also published a statement from demonstration organizers.
“Desegregation took place today at four lunch counters according to a preconceived plan,” reads the statement. “This plan was endorsed by a Citizens Committee formed at the request of the involved merchants. The purpose of this committee was to study and mediate the problems arising from lunch counter desegregation.”
The statement goes on to say that the committee and owners of the four stores held meetings, prior to the sit-in, to determine how best to desegregate their lunch counters.
The Tribune acknowledged groups like the Students Protest Against Segregation that spearheaded the picketing and boycotting campaign, and it mentions an incident during the picketing campaign in which an altercation between a picketer and a white man resulted in the latter’s arrest and conviction for assault. This was prior to the Aug. 8 sit-in.
The Tribune also reports that the boycott and picketing campaign were called off following the sit in.
Both clippings will be included in the society’s upcoming exhibit on integration.
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Correction, 9:55 a.m. Aug. 8: The last name of civil rights organizer Sammie Redd was misspelled in an earlier version of this story.
