Friendship 9
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

The Friendship Nine, or Rock Hill Nine, was a group of African-American men who went to jail after staging a
sit-in A sit-in or sit-down is a form of direct action that involves one or more people occupying an area for a protest, often to promote political, social, or economic change. The protestors gather conspicuously in a space or building, refusing to mo ...
at a segregated
McCrory's McCrory Stores or J.G. McCrory's was a chain of five and dime stores in the United States based in York, Pennsylvania. The stores typically sold shoes, clothing, housewares, fabrics, penny candy, toys, cosmetics, and often included a lunch cou ...
lunch counter A lunch counter (also known as a luncheonette) is, in the US, a small restaurant, similar to a diner, where the patron sits on a stool on one side of the counter and the server or person preparing the food serves from the opposite side of the ...
in
Rock Hill, South Carolina Rock Hill is the largest city in York County, South Carolina and the fifth-largest city in the state. It is also the fourth-largest city of the Charlotte metropolitan area, behind Charlotte, Concord, and Gastonia (all located in North Carolina, ...
in 1961. The group gained nationwide attention because they followed the 1960
Nashville sit-ins The Nashville sit-ins, which lasted from February 13 to May 10, 1960, were part of a protest to end racial segregation at lunch counters in downtown Nashville, Tennessee, Nashville, Tennessee. The sit-in campaign, coordinated by the Nashville S ...
strategy of "Jail, No Bail", which lessened the huge financial burden
civil rights Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and political life of ...
groups were facing as the
sit-in movement The sit-in movement, sit-in campaign or student sit-in movement, were a wave of sit-ins that followed the Greensboro sit-ins on February 1, 1960 in North Carolina. The sit-in movement employed the tactic of nonviolent direct action and was a p ...
spread across the South. They became known as the Friendship Nine because eight of the nine men were students at Rock Hill's
Friendship Junior College Friendship College was a college in Rock Hill, South Carolina that was established in 1891. One basketball player from the school, Harthorne Wingo, played in the NBA and was an NBA Finals champion A champion (from the late Latin ''campio'' ...
.


Background

The first sit-in happened in February 1960 when four black students from
North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (also known as North Carolina A&T State University, North Carolina A&T, N.C. A&T, or simply A&T) is a public, historically black land-grant research university in Greensboro, North Caro ...
sat down at a segregated
Woolworth's Woolworth, Woolworth's, or Woolworths may refer to: Businesses * F. W. Woolworth Company, the original US-based chain of "five and dime" (5¢ and 10¢) stores * Woolworths Group (United Kingdom), former operator of the Woolworths chain of shops ...
lunch counter in
Greensboro, North Carolina Greensboro (; formerly Greensborough) is a city in and the county seat of Guilford County, North Carolina, United States. It is the third-most populous city in North Carolina after Charlotte and Raleigh, the 69th-most populous city in the Un ...
. The movement spread across the South, reaching Rock Hill on Feb. 12, when about 100 black students staged sit-ins at various downtown lunch counters. Over the next year, several sit-ins were held in the city.


Ongoing demonstrations

On Jan. 31, 1961, students from Friendship Junior College and others picketed McCrorys's on Main Street in Rock Hill to protest the segregated lunch counters at the business. They walked in, took seats at the counter and ordered hamburgers, soft drinks and coffee. The next day, 10 were convicted of trespassing and breach of the peace and sentenced to serve 30 days in jail or to pay a $100 fine. One man paid a fine, but the remaining nine — eight of whom were Friendship students —chose to take the sentence of 30 days hard labor at the York County Prison Farm. Their choosing jail over a fine or bail marked a first in the Civil Rights Movement since the 1960 Nashville sit-ins, and it sparked the "jail, no bail" strategy that came to be emulated in other places. A growing number of people participated in the sit-ins and marches that continued in Rock Hill through the spring and into the summer.


Prison strikes

Since these protestors chose prison instead of bail, they were sent to a work camp, where twice they refused to work, were put on bread and water as punishment.


The nine

In 2007 the city of Rock Hill unveiled an historic marker honoring the Friendship Nine at a reception honoring the men. At that time, eight of the Friendship Nine were living. * Robert McCullough (died on August 7, 2006) * John Gaines * Thomas Gaither (at the time, he was a field secretary with the
Congress of Racial Equality The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) is an African Americans, African-American civil rights organization in the United States that played a pivotal role for African Americans in the civil rights movement. Founded in 1942, its stated mission ...
and was the only one of the nine who was not a Friendship student) * Clarence Graham (died on March 25, 2016) * Willie Thomas .T. "Dub"Massey (is now a Substitute teacher in the Rock Hill area) * Willie McCleod (died on December 31, 2020) * James Wells (died on July 7, 2018) * David Williamson Jr. * Mack Workman


The significance

"What made the Rock Hill action so timely ... was that it responded to a tactical dilemma that was arising in
SNCC The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, often pronounced ) was the principal channel of student commitment in the United States to the civil rights movement during the 1960s. Emerging in 1960 from the student-led sit-ins at segrega ...
discussions across the South: how to avoid the crippling limitations of scarce bail money," wrote
Taylor Branch Taylor Branch (born January 14, 1947) is an American author and historian who wrote a Pulitzer Prize winning trilogy chronicling the life of Martin Luther King Jr. and much of the history of the American civil rights movement. The final volume o ...
in '' Parting the Waters,'' his Pulitzer Prize winning account of the Civil Rights Movement. "The obvious advantage of 'jail, no bail' was that it reversed the financial burden of the protest, costing the demonstrators no cash while obligating the white authorities to pay for jail space and food. The obvious disadvantage was that staying in jail represented a quantum leap in commitment above the old barrier of arrest, lock-up, and bail-out."


Convictions overturned

In 2015, Judge John C. Hayes III (nephew of the original judge who sentenced the Friendship Nine to 30 days jail time at York County, SC chain-gang) of Rock Hill overturned the convictions of the nine, stating: "We cannot rewrite history, but we can right history." At the same occasion, Prosecutor Kevin Brackett apologized to the eight men still living, who were in court. The men were represented at the hearing by Ernest A. Finney, Jr., the same lawyer who had defended them originally, who subsequently went on to become the first African-American Chief Justice of the
South Carolina Supreme Court The South Carolina Supreme Court is the highest court in the U.S. state of South Carolina. The court is composed of a Chief Justice and four Associate Justices.
since
Reconstruction Reconstruction may refer to: Politics, history, and sociology *Reconstruction (law), the transfer of a company's (or several companies') business to a new company *'' Perestroika'' (Russian for "reconstruction"), a late 20th century Soviet Unio ...
.


References


External links


Heraldonline video of historic marker ceremony in 2007

Civil Rights History Project: Thomas Walter Gaither
video 2:11:06, Library of Congress
‘Our ultimate choice is desegregation or disintegration’ – recovering the lost words of a jailed civil rights strategist
The Conversation {{Civil rights movement 1961 in South Carolina 1961 in American politics Civil rights protests in the United States Civil disobedience History of South Carolina Overturned convictions in the United States Rock Hill, South Carolina McCrory Stores History of African-American civil rights Lunch counters