The national identity of Raleigh and Durham in the Civil Rights Movement in some ways paralleled those of A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin. They were persistent centers of effective organizing, planning and fund-raising, but seldom grabbed headlines. History is more revealing. Raleigh and Durham should be revered for their Civil Rights Movement contributions as much as Montgomery, Selma, Little Rock, Greensboro, Birmingham, Jackson, Memphis and Nashville.

    In 1959, Rev. Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. began meeting with Rev. Douglas Moore of Asbury Temple United Methodist Church and SCLC other leaders in Durham to plan the second major strategy of the Civil Rights Movement of direct, non-violent confrontation tactics to address public segregation. Influenced by Dr. King’s 1958 book, Stride Towards Freedom, four courageous North Carolina A&T students sat at a segregated Greensboro Woolworth lunch counter on 1 February 1960. For profiles in courage, picture this. The first sit-in students did so without police protection, financial support or sufficient bail money. Days later other North Carolina Sit-ins kicked off in Durham, Raleigh, Winston-Salem and Charlotte.

    Seeing the opportunity to energize the Civil Rights Movement, Dr. King and key SCLC members met again in Durham to refine their direct action strategy in support of college student sit-in tactics. On 16 February 1960, Dr. King proclaimed the next major SCLC strategy on the steps of White Rock Baptist Church in Durham, “Fill Up the Jails!” This strategy worked because heroic, well-mannered, childless and jobless college students could afford to spend the night in jail for organized, non-violent civil disobedience against uncivil laws. The students were also friendly faces that attracted national and international supporters. Meanwhile, the SCLC and NAACP sent out the call for nationwide resources to organize sit-ins, bail students out of jail, request police protection, and invite national media coverage.

    After seeing Black college students successfully employ sit-ins in Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Durham, Raleigh and Charlotte in early February, money poured into the SCLC and NAACP to support sit-in projects. Heading one of the richest Black business communities nationwide, Durham’s Black business leaders were particularly important for their project financing and bail money.

    A gifted grass-roots organizer and human rights activist, Ella Baker (1903-1986) emerged to help the energetic, inexperienced students of the Civil Rights Movement. Born in Norfolk, raised in Raleigh and graduated valedictorian from Shaw University in 1927, Ella was a maverick who never accepted the male-dominated status quo. Though Ella was a child of the South, she challenged Shaw University policies that she found to be demeaning. Living in New York City during the Depression Era, she was very active in a number of local political causes. Ella worked as a NAACP field secretary and branch director from 1940-1946 throughout the South. The new branches she opened or strengthened represented infrastructure the Civil Rights Movement would need for gains to come later. Although Ella resigned from the NAACP national staff in 1946 over philosophical differences, she stayed on as the first woman to head the New York branch and led its fight to desegregate New York City public schools.

    In 1956, Ella Baker, Bayard Rustin and Stanley Levison established an organization to raise money from the North to support the Civil Rights Movement in the South. In 1957, Ella moved to Atlanta to organize Dr. King’s newly formed Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) and run a voter registration campaign. In 1959, she left SCLC over philosophical differences concerning central-driven decisions favored by Dr. King and others vs. local–driven decisions that she favored.

    When the North Carolina student sit-ins began, Ella felt a kindred spirit and quickly moved to assist them with organizational skills and access to financial support. From her perspective, funded SCLC and central-driven NAACP approaches could not be as effective as funded students with local-driven approaches. So she took a job at the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) in Raleigh and invited college sit-in leaders to attend an organizing conference held in Raleigh at Shaw University on 16-17 April 1960. From that conference, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was born.

    SNCC provided the platform for John Lewis and Julian Bond of Georgia, Fannie Lou Hamer of Mississippi, Bob Moses of New York City, Jesse Jackson of North Carolina A&T, and Stokely Carmichael of Howard University to emerge as national civil rights activists. Unlike older civil rights groups, SNCC stressed direct tactics initiated by local groups and encouraged women, the young, and the poor to take leadership positions. With such fertile ground to her liking, Ella was very productive in SNCC activities throughout the South. In the 1960s, SNCC Sit-ins and Freedom rides opened access to public facilities and private enterprises that served the public, more than laws alone could ever do. Thousands of SNCC activists made the “Colored Only” signs and practices disappear.