HIGH POINT, N.C. — High Point community members gathered Friday to commemorate the 62nd anniversary of the High Point Woolworth store sit-in, the first civil rights sit-in led by high school students.
On February 11, 1960, 26 William Penn High School students walked into the Woolworth store in High Point and at the counter and did their homework. They were met with anger but stayed at the counter until the store closed early, according to an account at the High Point Museum.
"We had to learn how to not fight and that everything is not always going to be what we want and we could help make a difference and use the education we were being taught," said Mary Lou Andrews Blakeney, one of the organizers of the High Point sit-in. "It wasn't always about being a fighter. Fight with words."
The students were inspired by the "Greensboro Four," the North Carolina A&T students who sat at a segregated Woolworth lunch counter just days before.
"The four guys in Greensboro had no clue really, I think, what they were starting," said Andrews Blakeney. "The fact that they were serious about it and there were other kids looking at them and other people wondering what was going to happen to them, it got us curious."
Andrews Blakeney started the February 11 Association to raise awareness about the sit-in and its impact on the civil rights movement.
"We knew that things were not right when we were children. Why? Because we couldn't go where they could go," said Andrew Blakeney at the ceremony Friday. "We were born into knowing that and our parents taught us how to act because of that."
The ceremony and prayer vigil Friday was held outside the former Woolworth store in downtown High Point (now a closed hotel) where a monument dedicated to the Woolworth 26 now stands.
"Thank God there were people of all cultures, races, colors that had like minds about changing sometimes and changing some things," said Andrews Blakeney.
Andrews Blakeney said she wants young people now to know that they can make a difference, like her and her classmates
"If you have a concern about something and you don't think it's right, you need to tell something, say something," said Andrews Blakeney. "Talk to your mom talk to your dad talk to your pastor, somebody you trust. Talk to them."