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January 14, 2014

Franklin McCain, One of Greensboro 4 Who Staged Woolworth Sit-In, Dies at 73 
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Franklin Mc Cain, one of the Greensboro Four, whose sit-in at a
Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina helped catalyze
the civil rights movement, has died at the age of 73. The group of four
African-American college students sat down at the whites-only counter in
on February 1, 1960, and refused to leave. The next day, they returned.
Within days, 300 people were taking part. The sit-in helped spark a wave
of similar actions across the segregated South. Today, two other members
of the Greensboro Four are still alive; a third, David Richmond, died in
1990. This is Franklin Mc Cain in a tribute video produced by the
Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.

Franklin Mc Cain: "I'm talking to you, the youth. I'm saying to you, all
you have to do is believe, all you have to do is have a dose of
commitment, throw yourself to the wind, forget about caution, and in the
words of Eric Hoffer, the stevedore, become the true believer. And my
parting words are to you, if you want to do something, don't wait for
the masses, because they ain't coming!"

Mc Cain died Thursday of respiratory complications at a hospital just a
few miles from the old Woolworth, which is now a civil rights museum.

 

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