Social Justice at Wake Forest

From the Seattle Times Archives

This week we celebrate the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  And yes, we are a week late!  Because school started after the official MLK day (January 16), we decided to move our celebration a week so that more people could participate.  “In 1957, Dr. King was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization formed to provide new leadership for the now burgeoning civil rights movement.  The ideals for this organization he took from Christianity; the operational techniques from Gandhi.  In the eleven-year period between 1957 and 1968, King traveled over six million miles and spoke over twenty-five hundred times, appearing wherever there was injustice, protest, and action; and meanwhile he wrote five books as well as numerous articles.”  Dr. King’s life and work have provided inspiration for people around the world. 

For many years now, Wake Forest and Winston-Salem State University have come together to honor the legacy of Dr. King.  On Monday, January 23, we will gather in Wait Chapel at 7:00 pm to celebrate.  The speaker for this year’s event is Soledad O’Brien.  O’Brien is the anchor of the new CNN Morning News program, Starting Point.  Her topic will be Social Justice: On TV, behind the scenes, and in our lives. 

Did you know that Wake Forest and Winston-Salem State students played a role in the Civil Rights Movement that King epitomized?  Have you heard about the lunch counter sit-ins?  The movement began on February 1, 1960 in Greensboro, NC.  At that time, “Jim Crow laws in at least 11 southern states prohibited most public interactions between blacks and whites in places such as restaurants, schools, courtrooms, busses and trains, movie theatres, even reform schools.”  College students across the south sought to change this injustice by sitting – white sand blacks together -- at lunch counters, waiting to be served.  The February 1, 1960 sit-in in Greensboro “is said to have been the catalyst for an entire movement.”  Four students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College went to Woolworth’s and sat down at a lunch counter reserved for white customers.  The first day there was little reaction, so the four returned with twenty-six additional students the next day and stayed at the counter for two hours.  On the third day, all sixty-six spaces were occupied by protesters.  Tensions escalated and the store was temporarily closed to prevent further violence.

Students throughout the south took up the cause.  According to Window on Wake Forest, “On February 23, 1960, a group of Wake Forest students walked into the Woolworth’s in downtown Winston-Salem and joined students from Winston-Salem State Teachers College (now WSSU) to protest segregated lunch counters.  Twenty one students were arrested that day – 10 white students from Wake Forest and 11 black students from Winston-Salem State.  The students’ non-violent protest, along with other protests in Winston-Salem, led to the desegregation of the city’s restaurants and lunch counters on May 23^rd of that year.  The sit-in at the Woolworth’s in Winston-Salem began a week after the more famous Greensboro sit-in, but a successful resolution came first in Winston-Salem.”

Again, according to Window on Wake Forest (February 1, 2010), “In a 2000 interview Mac (G. McLeod) Bryan, professor emeritus if Christian Ethics, said he ‘wasn’t too surprised when (the students) were engaging in it.  They were in many ways the kind of student that was seeking a wider vision and perspective on life… What got them to leave the campus and go to the streets in civil disobedience was a sense of injustice and unfairness.”

Those students took action to help stop injustice and discrimination in Winston-Salem.  As you think about the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Wake Forest students who cared enough to sit in solidarity with others to create social change, remember that injustices still exist today.  According to Triad Ladder of Hope, located in Greensboro, today there are still over 30 million slaves worldwide.  You may be tempted to think that slavery exists far away and there is little that we can do about it.  But slavery exists in North Carolina and throughout the United States.  And injustice can be found throughout the world.  In the spirit of Pro Humanitate, think this week about ways that you can help to create a more just world for all people.