“The Greensboro Four” will be honored guests at UNC-Chapel Hill’s 2014 African American History Month Lecture with civil rights scholar Hasan Kwame Jeffries speaking.
The lecture is scheduled for 7 p.m. on February 5 in the Hitchcock Multi-Purpose Room of the Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History.
Jeffries, award-winning author of Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama’s Black Belt, will speak on “Civil Rights and Civil Wrongs: North Carolina and the Struggle for Justice and Equality.” Jeffries is an associate professor in the History Department of The Ohio State University.
Chancellor Carol L. Folt will welcome “The Greensboro Four” — Jibreel Khazan (formerly Ezell Blair Jr.), Joseph McNeil, and descendants of the late Franklin McCain and late David Richmond.
The four were students at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University on February 1, 1960, when they sat down at the segregated lunch counter inside the Greensboro, N.C., Woolworth store. The peaceful protest grew to more than 300 on its fourth day, and was part of a movement in other Southern states.
The Association for the Study of African American Life and History, founder of Black History Month, chose the 2014 theme of “Civil Rights.”
The program will include a tribute to the Greensboro Four and a special presentation. UNC’s Black Student Movement singing group Harmonyx and senior Kaswanna Kanyinde, prize-winning mezzo-soprano, will provide music of the African American experience. A book-signing and reception will follow.
Published January 27, 2014.