USA : race and space

Greensboro, like most American Woolworth stores, included a lunch counter, which served hot and cold drinks, meals and ice-cream throughout the day. In keeping with local convention it served only white customers. African-Americans were excluded.

On February 1, 1960 four African-American students, David Richmond, Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain and Ezell J. Blair (now known as Jibreel Kazaan), who were studying at the all-black North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College, asked for service at the counter. The Woolworth Associate followed her training and refused to serve them, but did allow them to sit down. The Store Manager, Frank 'Curly' Harris, asked them to move but was not prepared to have them forcibly removed or to report them for trespass. Instead he sought advice from his line management.

In the days that followed the number of protestors grew. A cat-and-mouse game developed between the protestors, the Woolworth's Manager, who appeared more concerned about a sales loss of $6,000 rather than the politics, and a local white faction which was determined to put an end to the protest.

The sit-in was peaceful, as the students followed the principles promoted by Martin Luther-King. The store was similarly cautious and tried to keep tensions down.

A local merchant, Ralph Johns, helped the students to compose a short letter to the Woolworth President, Robert C. Kirkwood, including the following:

Dear Mr. President:

We the undersigned are students at the Negro college in the city of Greensboro. Time and time again we have gone into Woolworth stores in Greensboro. We have bought thousands of items at the hundreds of counters in your stores. Our money was accepted without rancor or discrimination, and with politeness towards us, when at a long counter just three feet away our money is not acceptable because of the colour of our skins......

We are asking your company to take a firm stand to eliminate discrimination. We firmly believe that God will give you courage and guidance in solving the problem.

Sincerely Yours, Student Executive Committee

It was a difficult question. Speaking at the stockholders' annual meeting in Watertown, New York after the situation was resolved, Kirkwood explained that while large, neither Woolworths nor any other company could influence the deep-rooted convictions of the people of the Southern States.

This was an honourable stance. In fact he had told the local manager several weeks earlier that he was free to desegregate the lunch counter. Harris delayed taking action until the vacation season to defuse things.

Finally, in July 1960, three African-Americans were served at the lunch counter. With minimal publicity Frank Harris chose to serve three Negro employees before opening the counter to all.

Company celebrations were short-lived. The Manager at the nearby branch in Winston-Salem, North Carolina resigned rather than serve Negro customers and was promptly replaced. In both towns the situation was quickly calmed, and, as the Greensboro Times reported, when the first Negroes were served "They came as individuals and they were served as individuals. The sky did not fall."

While in North Carolina the sky didn't fall, in Washington DC President John F. Kennedy was also looking to the sky. But for JFK the race was for space. He planned to steal back the lead from the Russians and ensure that America was the first to land a man on the moon.

Behind the scenes the man-on-the-moon project drew heavily on the experience of Wehrner Von Braun, the German aristocrat and rocket-scientist who had built V2 rockets with such devastating effect towards the end of World War II.

In a speech to students on 12 September 1962, Kennedy declared:

"We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills; because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."

But if I were to say, my fellow citizens, that we shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to earth, re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun--almost as hot as it is here today--and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out--then we must be bold.

Well, space is there, and we're going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.

Sadly JFK did not live to see his vision become a reality, falling victim to a sniper's bullet the following year. But the target was achieved, and Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" on 20 July 1969, five months before the deadline set by the President.

While all the preparation work for the moon landings was underway, both the British and North American Woolworth stores were quick to stock a full range of models of the craft. The Saturn V model and separate landing module were the must-have toys for every self-respecting boy at Christmas 1969!

In some ways the rights and wrongs of planning to send men to the moon while negro and white men couldn't share a lunch counter in your own back yard seems surreal. So does using rocket designs invented to bomb London in World War II. But Kennedy's dream was realised. The programme was widely acknowledged as "the best of our energies and skills".

Today when the doors at your supermarket open automatically, or as you read this page on your PC via satellite and broadband, remember Michael Collins at the controls of Apollo 11 and the pilots, ground crew and boffins at NASA. And reflect on the words that Fred Borman, the astronaut aboard Apollo 10, chose for a broadcast back to earth as he orbited the moon on Christmas Day 1968:
 

"Give us oh God the vision that can see Thy love in the world despite human failure.
Give us the faith to trust Thy goodness in spite of our ignorance and weakness.
Give us the knowledge that we may continue to pray with understanding hearts,
and show us what each one of us can do to set forth the coming of the day of universal peace."

By way of a footnote to the 1960s in the American Woolworth, here's a stock check! By 1970 Robert C. Kirkwood had become Chairman of a diversified chain of more than 5,400 stores across the globe. He had acquired Richman Brothers and the Kinney Shoe Corporation. He had also opened over 100 Woolcos in the USA, along with 50 in Canada and 6 in the UK. He had funded the changes by increasing debt.

The Corporation had learned from Greensboro too. Not only did the town have its own Woolco at Greenbriar Mall, with a big lunch counter that welcomed everyone, but Kirkwood had initiated a scheme to hand over the keys and freeholds of some inner city stores to local communities. The aim was to show commitment to reducing poverty in deprived areas, and to enlist the neighbours' help in tackling the vandalism and petty crime that Woolworth's faced. The Harlem branch became the first in a wave of community-based stores, when it was given to a local group at a ceremony to mark the five-and-ten chain's ninetieth birthday in June 1969.

The 1960s Gallery

Top down - sixties overview   Woolco - Woolies get out of out of town   Winfield own brand launch

Advent of the Superstore    Food for thought   Computerisation and Central Distribution

Hits of the Sixties     USA - race and space  Working conditions

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