Chapter 6: Words of Action: The Speeches of President Alfonso Elder and the North Carolina Student Movement

By 1960, Dr. Alfonso Elder had been in office for twelve of the fifteen years he would serve as president of the historically Black North Carolina College in Durham (now North Carolina Central University). Yet, during the same year, Elder and other college presidents in North Carolina faced a new challenge—student-initiated demonstrations against legalized racial segregation. Despite many presidents’ years of administrative experience, they were mere novices to the student unrest that seemingly appeared out of nowhere.¹ In fact, one president considered the demonstrations “unusual.”²

The first demonstration was small. It started in Greensboro on February 1, 1960, when four students from the historically Black North Carolina A&T State University sat at a segregated lunch counter at the downtown F. W. Woolworth, the local five and ten cent store, refusing to leave until served. The store management refused to serve the students, and eventually, the store closed for the day at its normal hours. Peacefully, the four students returned to the North Carolina A&T campus.³ Seemingly small, and perhaps even harmless, the first day of protests ended. Yet, news of the demonstration spread quickly, and within a month, similar student-led demonstrations had occurred in ten cities in North Carolina. The same happened across the South in seven cities in Virginia, three in Florida, four in South Carolina, two in Alabama, one in Kentucky, one in Maryland, and two in Tennessee.⁴