Clarence Harris

Clarence Lee "Curly" Harris (1905–1999) was the store manager at Woolworth's in Greensboro, North Carolina, during the 1960 sit-ins.

Early life

Harris was born in Raleigh, North Carolina. He grew up and attended high school in Durham, North Carolina, where he began his career at the F. W. Woolworth Company store, in 1923, as an assistant stock room manager. He continued working at Woolworth's after school and at night during his five and a half years at Trinity College, now Duke University, from which he graduated in 1928 with a major in accounting and business law.

Career

From 1929 to 1933 Harris worked as assistant manager at the Durham Woolworth's. In 1933 he was transferred to the Harrisonburg, Virginia, store and promoted to store manager. He managed the Wilmington, North Carolina, store from 1937 to 1947, and the Raleigh store from 1947 to 1955, when he was transferred to the Greensboro, North Carolina store. He remained at the Greensboro store until his retirement in 1969.

Greensboro sit-ins

For more details on this topic, see Greensboro sit-ins.

On February 1, 1960, Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair, Jr. (later known as Jibreel Khazan), and David Richmond, four young African-American students from the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (NC A&T), entered the downtown Greensboro Woolworth's and sat at the "whites only" lunch counter. Although a Woolworth's waitress told them "we don't serve Negroes here," the four students refused to leave their seats for the rest of the day. During the following days and months the four students were joined by other students in their sit-in demonstration, Sit-in protests spread to over one hundred cities across the United States during the next year, and are considered the onset of the Civil Rights Movement.^[1]

On Monday, July 25, 1960, after nearly $200,000 in losses due to the demonstrations, store manager Harris quietly integrated the lunch counter when he asked 3 black employees of the store to change out of work clothes into street clothes and order a meal at the counter. These were the first black customers to be served at the store's lunch counter. The event received little publicity .^[2]

References

External links

Foot Locker

Company	F. W. Woolworth Company Champs Sports Eastbay Foot Locker Kinney Shoes Woolco Other Divisions & Namesakes

Buildings	Woolworth Building St. Louis Office Shadow Lawn Watertown Store Wilmington Store Winfield Hall Winfield House Other Buildings

Culture	Love at the Five and Dime Seafoam salad Woolworth v. Contemporary Arts

Events	Foot Locker Cross Country

Civil Rights	Greensboro sit-ins Ezell Blair Jr. Franklin McCain Joseph McNeil David Richmond International Civil Rights Center and Museum February One Clarence Harris Lexington Store Nashville sit-ins

Family	F. W. Woolworth Barbara Hutton Poor Little Rich Girl Lance Reventlow (married to Cheryl Holdridge and Jill St. John)

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