The only family internment camp in world war ii in which he says is the real reason for the cap. The government goes to the father and says, we have a deal for you. We will reunite you in your camp if you agree to go voluntarily. I discovered with the real secret of the camp was. They also had to agree to voluntarily repatriate to germany and japan if the government decided they needed to be repatriated. The truth of the matter is that the crystal city camp was humanely administered by the ins, but the special ordovician in the department of state used special war division in the department of state used it as the center of roosevelts Prisoner Exchange program. You are watching American History tv. 48 hours of program in on American History tv on cspan3. Follow us on twitter for information on our schedule of upcoming programs and to keep up with the latest history news. All weekend long, American History tv is featuring greensboro, North Carolina, home of the Guilford County courthouse. Although American Forces lost the battle of guilford courthouse during the american wards, during the american war, the fighting left the dish we can. Our staff recently visited many sites exploring greensboros history. Learn more about greensboro all weekend here on American History tv. Going through and down the street, some of them had eggs going through them eggs thrown at them and water dumped on their heads from building. It never got to the point where isnt this nice . It was never nice. It was just more than the city could handle in the final amount. It was about unanimity and solidarity and we are all in this together. I grew up in ohio. Ohio was a little less segregated. Not less racist, but less segregated. So while i grew up in ohio and i understood that things were different in the south, i also grew up in a family that was very sophisticated about politics and what the situation was. I knew both sides of the coin and how i felt about it was that of course it was unjust and it needed to be changed. My father was very much involved in africanamerican rights as a social worker. He worked for the National Urban league. I was not unaware of any of this and what this meant to black americans. Essentially, life was like what it was for the rest of africanamericans and particularly in the south, it was a matter of jim crow segregation. That is, if we went downtown to the movies, we had to sit in the balcony in the closed section. If we went to a place to eat, we may or may not and probably not will not get served. What happened at will words they enjoyed sell your snacks but you had to stand up at the end of the room woolworths, they enjoyed selling you snacks but you had to stand up at the end of the room. In some places you were not welcome whether you had the money or not. Basically it was life and apartheid. It was life that was secret and segregated and secondclass citizenship. When people begin to think the same way and somebody else begins to think the same way and ideas take off for reasons that nobody quite understands. I think it was time. You know, people were fed up and sick and tired of being sick and tired, of being secondclass citizens, and so they all had that same kind of sense, it is time to do something. Dr. King came to Bennett College and spoke in 1958. There were things going on, school desegregation, which was a big deal in america in 1954, 1955, the Supreme Court decision. All of that is going on. Here on this campus that was a student naacp chapter. The naacp has always had student chapters, and particularly in historically black colleges, which is what this is. Of course we had a chapter. The chapter had an advisor, a couple of advisors. In the course of meeting with the advisors and the students who are members of the chapter a lot of conversations took place about what can we do to make things better, do we need to be doing anything, other people are doing things in other parts of the country. Over a period of more than a year, there were conversations about what we could do and it kind of boiled down to sitins, lets look at woolworths, lets look at what can be done. These meetings took place right here on this campus at the student union. Bennett college and a t and the Bennett College advisors as well. There were plans made to start the sitins. Those plans begin in the fall of 1959. Somewhere along the way they were advised by the president of Bennett College, who happened to be my auntie, who said you should really not do this until after christmas vacation because if you start this and you go home for christmas vacation, the momentum and energy and enthusiasm will be broken and you will have to kind of start all over again in the winter. That is why he got put off its got put off from december of 1959 and that is why when the guys came back from christmas vacation in those days, you had a long break on college campuses. Most of january, people were gone. We got back at the end of january and the a t fellows decided they were going to go downtown and sit in without having a meeting with us. They kind of jumped the gun. The planning for it was essentially done and it was not it was spontaneous in the sense that those decided to take the bull by the horns. It is not that they suddenly woke up that day and it was a new idea. I went there on the third day. The guys had gone down on the first and the second, and here is the third day and they are expecting us by this time. They know something is going to happen. Number one, it is quiet. Number two, the lunch counter which was very long and lined up , but it was quite intimidating because most of the seats were empty. I remember when i got there except for College Students. Except for a t and Bennett College, most everybody else was like im not going down there because anything might happen. There is this empty seat and it is quiet and we going sit down and wait, you know, to see what is going to happen. A waitress came by with a tray of knives. She was so nervous that the knives were rattling. I was a little nervous, because i did not know what she might be doing with those knives. I could tell that she was scared. She was as scared as i was. We sat there with their textbooks trying to study with our textbooks trying to study. I remember her saying, we cant serve yall. We dont serve colored. Im going to have to ask yall to leave. We had instructions. Just dont say anything. Keep sitting, dont say anything. If they asked you what you would like, ask for a cup of coffee. They never asked for what we wanted because they want going to serve us. I sat there for at least an hour. I think we had our shifts. We had planened that if you want there are 9 00, you were back on campus at 10 30 four euros 11 00 class. We had cars that went for your 11 00 class. We had cars that went backandforth for transportation. I dont know who was driving. I think i was to nervous to remember who was driving us and dropping us off in front of woolworths, and that same person would be there in an hour to pick us up and bring us back. It was quite a nerveracking exciting, you had the sense that you are doing something very important and very significant. They werent hostile. I dont think they wanted to provoke anybody. It was just deadpan. In terms of people where they came from, i dont know. You had a lot of young white guys hanging around, yelling making bad remarks. The day i remember that happening was the day i was beginning in front of woolworth s with picket signs and these cars of young tough guys drove by and said of the things and racial epithets and all sorts of things. And that was very unnerving. That was like, are we going to get out of this ok . You know. There were incidents within the five and dime stores as the weeks went on. The incidence got to be very scary. There were people who tried to provoke, especially the men were sitting in at the counter. Somebody got burned with a cigarette stub. What they were trying to do was provoke us out of nonviolence. Jostling people. I was not present for that. But all of that is in my book. I interviewed a lot of people. Many of them have received nonviolent training and were very committed to this way. This is the way you do this. We are very connected to dr. Kings philosophy and even some of them had been in demonstrations in other places. They called on that discipline of dont hit back, dont provoke them. There were techniques that they had to use and they believed in nonviolence, so it was not like in a vacuum. They knew what could happen and some of them had experienced what could happen. I think it was a remarkable exercise in discipline and commitment to the movement. It was not a matter of one nice day, they are going to let us each. This went on until april. In april, they arrested 45 College Students and that was i think, 13 bennett women were arrested in april and the rest of them went from a t. I dont know. I could not find the numbers exactly, the names and numbers. I do know that the newspaper says at least 13 women from bennett were arrested in april. And then there was a moratorium and a time to cool off and try to discuss things. But it was actually july before woolworths integrated. It was a tough fight, a tough fight for that particular store. Once woolworths was open, that did not mean that greensboro was open. It was just one fight after another until 1963. Greensboro was not the first sitin. It was wichita where the first sitin took place. The difference is it did not take off in the sense of National Media and people copycating yet. Greensboro, everything came together. People became galvanized and imaginations got sparked. There were citizens in South Carolina and florida and all across the country after sitin in South Carolina and florida and all across the country after greece broke. What are we going to do about restaurants in movies after greensboro. What are we going to do about restaurants and movies . They try to keep hope alive, as Jesse Jackson says, by having meetings and energizing people. It was difficult after a wild. People graduated, they went home, got jobs. You have a small group of students and faculty who are left here to try keep things moving, and a lot of that is in the book also. A lot of those people were bennett people. One of the original sitinners sai, if it had not been for the said if it had not been for the women of bennett after the will worse sitin, we wool worths sitin, we would not have been able to move forward. Things quieted down in 1961 and 1962. Then it picked up again. I cannot tell you why. There are Different Things that happened in history. People began to say ok, and the national organization, the congress of racial equality sent some National People down the greensboro to help and they began to have organized sitin at the mayfair cafeteria and the movies. The more they did, the more people joined. By 1962 you have this continuing pressure on the city and marches and so on, which are growing and finally this culminates in the Police Department beginning to arrest people for trespassing. That is when you have 250 bennett women who get arrested in 1963. It is kind of a huge push for integration. Meantime in washington, you have president Lyndon Johnsons efforts to support the Civil Rights Movement and all the things that are going on nationally, so it looks to us in greensboro like this is really it is passed time for you to open this city. What happened in greensboro is this growing Mass Movement with adults, community people, clergyman, teachers, workpeople, all kinds of people, and students all converging in mass marches downtown and volunteering to get arrested. We filled up the jails to the point where they had to start baking people not to get her begging people not to get arrested. That was a struggle. Youre been in college here at Bennett College, they tried to call my aunt to tell the girls to call off and she said i would not do that. They have that right enough i have to give exams in jail, that is what i will do. Guys had to struggle. They finally had to call them out of jail because a t is a state school and there was pressure from the governor. It became a tussle between the city and the colleges in the africanamerican community, and we were not going to give up at that point. They could not keep arresting 200 people. They did not have anywhere to put these people. They were housing the girls at bennett not downtown at the Police Station but at an old hospital where the polio epidemic had been in out of the armory because they did not have anywhere to put them. They had 30something girls in a room with five mattresses. When you are doing this kind of movement and youve got them on the run, its like, there is no way we are going to make it easy for you by not getting arrested. As long as you have this position that if you go in this restaurant you are trespassing and we are going to arrest you so we gone the restaurant knowing theyre going to arrest you. If you stop going to the restaurant, you have said that we are wrong and you are right. Ok . So that is your problem if you do not have anywhere to put me. All you have to do is stop arresting me for trespassing and certainly in this restaurant and the whole thing will be solved and serve me in this restaurant and the whole thing will be sold. That is how nonviolent direct action works. You dont do anything wrong. You just put people in a position where they will see they are wrong. You will be interested to know that greensboro was the last city of any major size in North Carolina to integrate. Having been the first to experience it, when you talk about a formative experience opening the door and getting in that car was like, ok, this is it. That particular moment said to me, this is a huge part of who you are. That you will take a stand for what is right and you will not worry about the implications of this and the risk you are taking. You will be this is who you are, and you do this out of love. You do not do this out of rage or anger. You do it out of love. Throughout the weekend American History tv is featuring greensboro, North Carolina. Our city tour staff traveled there to learn about its rich history. Learn more about greensboro and other stops on cspans city tour at www. Cspan. Org ci tiestour. Youre watching American History tv, all weekend, every weekend on cspan3. With live coverage of the u. S. House on cspan in the senate on cspan 2, here on cspan 3 we show you the most relevant public hearings and Public Affairs events. On the weekends, cspan 3 is home to American History tv with programs that tell the nations stories. The civil war, visiting key of acts key events, history bookshelf, with the bestknown American History writers, the presidency, looking at the policies and legacies of our nations commanders in chief lectures and history with top college professors, and their new series real america featuring archival education films from the 1930s through the 1970s. History bookshelf features popular riders and airs on cspan every week at this time. George washington became the First American president in 1789. Next a 2000 five project where historians and scientists from George Washingtons mount vernon estate set out to better understand what the first u. S. President looked like an different moments of his life. This 40 minute event was found in 2012 at the Central Arkansas library in little rock arkansas. I have written nonfiction books on a
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