Franklin McCain

By JOHN NORTH

Franklin McCain, one of the original four students who staged a 1960 sit-in at a Greensboro Woolworth’s lunch counter — an action credited as the spark to the nonviolent civil rights movements — spoke March 30 at UNC Asheville’s Humanities Lecture Hall.

McCain’s message was to find one’s own iner inspiration to do what is right, instead of waiting for others.

A documentary on the sit-ins preceded McCain’s talk on “Finding Your Own Inner Inspiration To Do What You Believe Is Right, Instead of Waiting for Others.”

The talk, which drew about 250 people, was sponsored by the UNCA chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

McCain, 70, who is now a member of the UNC system Board of Governors, said he and his three college friends felt “the promise of democracy” did not relate to them because “I was a child of the sun.”

Speaking personally, McCain said, “I felt if this (oppression) is all there is to this life, I felt it wasn’t a life worth living.”

McCain said he considered suicide in his youth, “but I felt it was the coward’s way out. I felt it was the epitome of selfishness.”

Despite the sting of oppression from whites he met, McCain said “I have no tales of woe about growing up.” With a line of educators in his family, he noted that “I always knew I was going to college.”

At N.C. AT&T University, McCain said he met “three guys as crazy as me.” The others, all of whom participated in the sit-in, included Joseph McNeil, Ezelle Blair Jr. and David Richmond.

“What we’d do — every night — is have a bull session and philosophize .. We just couldn’t understand, as 17- and 18-year-old freshmen, the behavior of our people” to accept the indignities from the oppression around them.

However, McCain noted, “We were simply armchair activists” who complained, but did nothing about problems.

Eventually, McCain said he reached a point of self-acceptance where he could make the one mile walk to the Woolworth’s store, where “you couldn’t be served simply because of pigmentation ... I was just too angry to be afraid.”

During the sit-in, the Greensboro Four were spit at, threatened with a club and had hot coffee poured over their heads, McCain said.

From the experience, “I got a dose of manhood, democracy and respect ... I knew that day that my days as a student were going to be over one way or another.”

When an older white woman approached him during the sit-in, McCain said he had negative preconceptions of her and was taken aback when she said, “You should have done this 10 years ago.”

To the crowd, he quipped, “I wanted to say ... ‘What do you expect. I was only seven years old’” 10 years earlier.

More seriously, McCain said, “I had stereotyped her.” He urged the crowd of UNCA students and guests to “be open-minded and learn who they are before you make snap judgments about them.”

McCain noted that the sit-in “was difficult and dangerous work. I have a file from the SBI and FBI. We were contacted by the Communist Party to see if we needed help ... If you know anything about Franklin McCain, I’m all about capitalism and making money. The Communist Party is not for me.”

After the sit-in, McCain said, “I got used to things like hate mail. People were admonishing me to go back to Africa ... We were mailed several nooses.”

In speaking generally of the civil rights movement, McCain said it was successful due to the efforts of “loads of white people,” as well as African-Americans.

Of the whites, he said, “Without them, the journey would have been much more difficult.”

Initially, he said there were not many older blacks involved in the civil rights movement, “but today, you can’t find anyone over 60 who wasn’t a civil rights activist in the ‘60s.”

He also singled out ministers as “the No. 1 group today that claimed to have participate in the civil rights movement,” when few actually did.

“There were eight to 10 people who caused the movement to be successful in Greensboro — and that is all.”

As for what he learned from the movement, he said, “If I do something like this again, I’ll never step back and negatiate for 10 days,” as with the Woolworth’s sit-in.

In summary, McCain said in striving for change, do not wait for the masses, do not ever request permission to start a revolution and “the facts do not matter, if the dream is big enough.

“I want to challenge you to make things right. You know what’s right or wrong when you see it.”

He told the UNCA crowd that between one’s birth and death, “is a dash. In that time, you can make a difference."