Greensboro Sit-in and Love
“Love is stronger than fear. No matter how many walls fear may build around us, warning us to be afraid of the person standing next to us, urging us to withdraw into deeper and deeper bunkers of conformity, claiming our only strength is in power, love will subvert it, to remind us that beneath the uniforms we all look the same, feel the same, cry and laugh the same. Love calls us to find a way to listen, learn and live. Every faith has its share of fanatics, but they are only as influential as we allow them to be. Love is our common ground. Love is the will of the many to overcome the fear of the few.” Steven Charleston Facebook Page.
The first of February was so long ago. It was a time of naivety when most could not believe or imagine this pandemic was coming to our own country. How bewildering that we would believe that we could keep an infection so contagious away from this land. Did we not realize that we are a global society?
I now remember seeing a Google image that day reminding us that sixty years ago on February first, 1960, four African American students from a local college in Greensboro, North Carolina began a nonviolent sit-in at “whites only” Woolworth Department Store’s lunch counter. Soon students joined them from all the local colleges, including the one I was soon to attend. The sit-ins spread all over the country. Finally, in July, Woolworth’s allowed blacks to eat at their counter after a substantial financial loss developed to all the stores when the students boycotted them. The Woolworth Store in Greensboro is now the International Civil Rights Center and Museum.
I write about this momentous civil rights movement because it started just before I went to college in Greensboro. I vaguely remember reading about it in our local paper, but at the time I was oblivious to the civil rights movement. My only concern was going to college. Is this going to keep me from going to college? During this time, I never took part in any movement for the rights of others. The four thousand women at my college only rioted when the drink machines were removed from the dorms on campus, but I did not even take part in that.
I am embarrassed to say that today I had to look up about the sit-in in Wikipedia. I wonder this morning about how aware I am still today of the suffering and loss of basic rights for others even in my state, much less in the world. I think I am more aware, but this event in my life sixty years ago reminds me how easy it is to be so wrapped up in my world and not see or be aware or do something about the loss of rights and suffering of others who are different: African Americans, Native Americans, Muslims, Hispanics, immigrants in our country and at our borders. I will keep this in my prayers today and pray for awareness to look outside of my life and reach out to the suffering of others right around me in my city and country and in the world which also is right around me.
Even if we missed opportunities to serve the under served before this pandemic, there is still time. Realize that the pandemic has been much harder on their lives than on ours.
Joanna. joannaseibert.com