The Woolworth's Sit-Ins
by gabe hart
FEATURED IN VOL 6, ISSUE 1: Around the table
When I was 28 years old, I separated my right shoulder. It happened during the first game of an all day flag football tournament. I was chasing the quarterback and moving a lot faster in my mind than in reality, and I dove with my right arm extended as far as I could stretch it. I landed on the ground just like that - my right arm stretched to exhaustion. When I hit the ground, my shoulder separated from whatever ligament or socket it was supposed to be attached. I knew immediately that something was wrong. I stayed face down on the field for a few seconds and slowly made my way up to my feet. The only thing I could think of was to find someone to “pop my shoulder back into place.” Luckily, there were multiple volunteers who offered to do it, and I stood leaning against the palms of an opponent as my shoulder found its way back home.
Over the course of the day and multiple games, my shoulder went in and out of place until finally it froze. That’s the medical term the doctor used to describe it when I went to the walk-in clinic that night. He said my shoulder had essentially become stuck in place (which was actually out of place) in order to protect itself. It’s like my brain had overridden my desire to instinctively move my arm to play a silly game. My body and mind were protecting me from further injury because I was too stubborn (see: dumb) to protect myself.
For several months, I couldn’t lift my right arm all the way up. I was coaching middle school softball at the time, and I couldn’t throw batting practice the entire season. There were times when my shoulder would feel completely fine, and then I would move it too far one way or too far another way and the pain would come back. Finally, after several months, my pain was gone. I could reach as high as I wanted. I could pick my daughter up with both arms again. It’s like my shoulder had never been separated from its natural location.
The new football season started in April, and I was back out there because recreational sports meant a little more to me than they should have. The first game of the season, I once again found myself pursuing the quarterback and, once again, I dove out of instinct. This time, however, I automatically tucked my right shoulder before I hit the ground. The next time I dove, the same thing happened. Even when I would tell myself not to tuck, my right arm still found a way to pull itself into my body before I hit the ground. My body was once again protecting itself from my stupidity.
Despite what you may read in your local gym, pain is not weakness leaving the body. In fact, pain is a reminder that we are weak. Our bodies are temporary. They break down. They age. Pain is our alarm system. It’s not something to be ignored.
Pain is not exclusive to our bodies. We all have suffered emotional pain for different reasons - a loved one passes, affection from someone isn’t returned, a friend moves away. On a deeper level, there are pains that we may not have experienced or inflicted directly. These are generational pains. These pains can include racism, sexism, and any inequality that one group of people imposes on another group of people. This pain should not simply be forgotten or ignored. It’s a story that should be told again and again to remind us to protect ourselves.
Only sixty years ago, our town, like much of the south, was in the middle of its own pain. Jim Crow laws had allowed states and communities to practice legal segregation under the guise of “separate but equal.” While clearly separating “coloreds” from “whites”, the results of that separation were anything but equal. Many times, these laws would be enforced by racist vigilantes before they were ever enforced by local law enforcement. Law enforcement would take a protester to jail; a vigilante would degrade a protester through physical and emotional violence.
The effects of this pain have been residual - reverberating across decades and generations. Its consequences have left some people fighting to claw their way out from under the oppression. It has caused some people to simply give up.
In 1960, the Civil Rights movement was spreading rapidly across the southern United States. This was especially true in larger cities like Nashville, Memphis, and Birmingham. However, in Jackson, segregation was still in full effect. Schools were obviously segregated. The same went for restaurants and water fountains. The city buses also had preferential seating based on one’s skin color.
A group of Lane College students had heard about the lunch counter sit-ins and bus boycotts in other cities and wanted to bring the same type of pressure to Jackson. One of those four students was Shirlene Mercer, who still lives in Jackson today.
“I was only seventeen when we started the protests,” Mrs. Mercer explained. “We had heard about the lunch counter sit-ins in Nashville and decided we need to do that here, too.”
Mrs. Mercer said that the group targeted public transportation first. With support from the African-American community in Jackson, bus boycotts had an almost immediate impact. In a matter of days, public transportation was desegregated. The group then turned their attention to lunch counters.
“The first day we walked in there everyone just sort of stopped and looked. They knew why we were there, though. It didn’t take them long to start harassing us once we sat down. They didn’t touch me because I was a woman, but I did get spit on. They hit the boys in the side of their heads. They boxed their ears,” Mrs. Mercer recalled.
I’ve seen the black and white video clips of the horrific scenes from the Civil Rights Movement. I’ve read words from a page that described moments of unnecessary trauma. I’ve viewed the interactive exhibits at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis. Until I spoke with Mrs. Mercer, however, I had never heard those stories from someone who experienced that pain willingly and sacrificially for the greater good of her people.
“We were arrested every day,” Mrs. Mercer said. “They didn’t take me to jail because I was a woman, but we kept going back. It lasted a couple of years.”
Day after day, the group of students would sit at a table and not be served. They would be hit. They would be spat on. They would be arrested. All of this occurring in a town where people knew each other, at the very least by face, if not name. It’s one thing to be ignored by a stranger or mocked by someone you’ve never seen. It’s an entirely different type of humiliation to be degraded by a fellow Jacksonian - by a person who you may have seen countless times before you were struck in the face by them.
“One Sunday, we walked into a white church. Some members got up and left the sanctuary. I didn’t understand that. I didn’t understand the water fountains, either. The water was coming from the same place. We were drinking the same water.”
Sixty years after Mrs. Mercer and her friends sat at the Woolworth’s lunch counter, that very same counter and chairs were put on display at The Old Country Store as a way to preserve the sacrifice, bravery, and pain of Jackson’s civil rights pioneers.
Along with the original chairs and counter, the exhibit also has a narrative displayed that tells the story of these Lane College students and the risks they took that most people will never truly understand or appreciate unless they’ve lived that life themselves.
At the unveiling of the exhibit, Lane College President Logan Hampton spoke. NAACP President Harrell Carter spoke. Jackson Mayor Scott Conger offered words of encouragement to a group of students who were present. Clark Shaw explained the importance of the display. Each of these men play a significant role in our community. Two black men and two white men spoke in front of a display that is there to remind us that from pain can come healing, but there cannot be healing without the acknowledgement of pain. We have to understand our wounds to treat them. We also have to realize that there is scar tissue that still needs to be stretched. Yes, it hurts, but it’s also necessary.
If I look close enough in the mirror, I can see that my right shoulder hangs just a fraction lower than my left. It never quite made it back to where it was before it unnaturally separated from the joint. My days of recklessly throwing my body around a field are long gone, but sometimes when I’m exercising or reaching a little more than I should for something, my shoulder will catch - just a flash of pain reminding me to be careful.
I didn’t ask Mrs. Mercer if she ever pictures herself at that lunch counter or ever has dreams about those days that feel so real that she wakes up suddenly. I didn’t ask her if she feels like those events happened to a different person because, in a way, she has lived two lives - pre and post segregation. I didn’t need to ask her those questions, though, because she made it clear that this is a story worth telling.
“As long as I can, I’ll tell this story,” she said.
There are four words in bold at the top of the exhibit - faith, courage, sacrifice, freedom. Each of those words are accurate descriptors for what took place in Jackson in the 1960’s. I think two words could be added to that list - pain and healing.