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February 1, 1960, Greensboro gained the attention of the nation, and the world focus their attention on the activities of four black students, who stood up, so the rest of Black America, could sit down. 43 years later, in Greensboro, NC, with February 1, just around the corner, the city is quietly gearing up for the one day a year A&T has the full attention of the city. The introductions, like the photographs have not changed since Greensboro began honoring the four college students who initiated the protest and brought the Civil Rights movement to Greensboro.
The legacy of the activism enjoyed by the University surely would have spawned a multitude of black leaders ready to pick up where the college freshmen left off 43 years ago. Jesse Jackson and Ronald McNair are the most notable Aggies that any one person in Greensboro can think of. Ronald McNair died tragically in a space shuttle, and Jesse Jackson has single handedly killed his own credibility with both black and whites alike. In Jesse's defense, no man is an island and we all fall short. In truth the climate in Greensboro, is much like it was in 1960, or at least this is the 2003 equivalent to the climate of the 1960 s. African-American children are receiving a substandard education, all the lawmakers in the state are still white serving white interests, and black churches are still saying, "...this life be over soon, heaven lasts always."
To their credit, there are some African-Americans who have achieved some measure of the American dream. They are not living below the poverty line, from paycheck to paycheck, and wondering where their children are. When compared with the majority of African-Americans in the city, those successful are still a precious few. This was once called tokenism, the practice of using a few to define the success or failure of many. Now, some form of tokenism has become a standard defense and rolls quite easily off of the tounges of blacks and whites any time a discussion about the state of Black America comes up.
If nothing else, out of respect for the celebrity that Greensboro has attained by being home to such a monumental moment in the Civil Rights Movement, it should have galvanized the city to be a model of equal rights. In 1979, Klan members and their supporters were acquitted for killing five anti-Klan demonstrators in Greensboro, N.C. How can the spirit of the Greensboro four live on in this city? How indeed can Greensboro, feel that it in any way shouldered the load that those four young men bore and sustained as the longer they sat, the heavier it became.
Every year the City of Greensboro and its citizens do the surviving members of the Greensboro Four a great disservice by inviting them back to this casualty of the Civil rights era. The truth of the matter is, the nation spends what has become a standard joke for any comedian, "...the shortest month of the year," celebrating Black History month, and scant hours focusing on Greensboro now.
The story has, like the softest bread in the bakery, grown stale. The sit-in movement, the Civil Rights Era all of it is now right of passage. Something to be heard about and discussed, but not acted on, it is a matter of conditioning, nothing more than a familiar taste in everybody's mouth.
Melva L. Florance
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