Today the church remembers not a saint, but an event involving many saints: The First Sit-In’s to dismantle Jim Crow Segregation.

On February 1st, 1960 Ezell A. Blair Jr., David Richmond, Joseph McNeil, and Franklin McCain, all freshman at the Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina (now North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University) walked into the Woolworth’s Diner in Greensboro, North Carolina intending to order and eat. They sat at the “White’s Only” counter for their order to be taken.

When they were refused service, they continued to sit and stay despite warning, despite slander, despite the forces the compelled them to comply with laws that, while legal, were immoral.

Not everything that is legal is moral, Beloved.

Eventually the diner closed for the night and the four patrons left, only to return the next day to resume their work…with twenty-three companions.

The movement gained momentum, and by this day, February 5th in 1960, over three hundred students had arrived to bear witness with their bare bodies to the inhumanity of the Jim Crow south (and, let’s be honest, the quietist passivism of the northern states).

One of the major achievements of the sit-in nonviolence movement was helping to dispel the white lie (literally) that people of color were “content” with the Jim Crow laws of the south. Even today you hear some of this echo through the tours of southern plantations where guides are instructed to say how “well” the white owners treated “the help,” making them “one of the family.”

But any therapist worth the paper their degree is printed on will tell you that “family” shouldn’t hurt like that…

The sit-ins joined the momentum of the Civil Rights movement across the country. By the end of February 1960 sit-ins had been organized in North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Maryland, Kentucky, Alabama, Virginia, and Florida.

That inertia then bled (literally) into March to Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Georgia and later to West Virginia, Ohio, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Illinois, Kansas, and Missouri.

By the end of July that Woolworths in Greensboro had been desegregated.

Justice can catch like wildfire, Beloved.

And in these days when civil rights are once again being threatened by “laws” some of which, while technically may be legal (“may” does a lot of heavy lifting there) are certainly immoral, we must grab onto the hope, the promise, the example of these saints who offered their bodies for the sake of the world.

The sit-in movement is a reminder for me, and should be for the whole church, especially the corners of the church who refused to sit-in during those days: being on the right side of history, being on the right side of humanity, is Divine.

Let those with ears to hear, hear.

-historical bits from Clairborne and Wilson-Hartgrove’s Common Prayer: Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals as well as public sources

-opinions mine

-icon “Lunch Counter” by Ricardo Morales