Joe Poole stood in the rain outside the downtown Woolworth store and recalled what it was like in 1960 for a black man to try to get a meal at some lunch counters in the South.
"There was a time when they wouldn't wait on you," said Poole, who is 85. "We've come a long way, but it won't be perfect until we get to heaven."Thursday will be the 30th anniversary of sit-ins, which began when four freshmen from then-all-black North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College sat at the Woolworth store's whites-only lunch counter and asked for service.
Their refusal to leave when they were denied service sparked similar sit-ins at other segregated lunch counters and helped established passive resistance as a tool of the 1960s civil rights movement.
The state since has erected a historical marker at the site and, on Wednesday, Greensboro begins five days of activities commemorating the anniversary with a panel discussion at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro.
"Not only was the South in for a time of change; more important, the terms of that change would no longer be dictated by white southerners," wrote William H. Chafe, a Duke University historian, in his 1980 book, "Civilities and Civil Rights."
When the four students - David Richmond, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair Jr. and Joseph McNeil - planned the sit-in, Greensboro was a segregated city.
Public buildings had separate water fountains for whites and blacks. Theaters had separate entrances for blacks, who were forced to sit in balconies. Blacks also were required to step to the rear on city buses.
The first sit-in will be re-enacted at 7:30 a.m. Thursday. A plaque and footprints will be dedicated in front of the store and a sculpture will be unveiled at North Carolina A&T State University.
All four demonstrators are expected to attend the celebration, which will include symposiums, an awards banquet, a performance of Alice Walker's "Down a Lonesome Road" and a jazz concert featuring Dizzy Gillespie.
On July 25, 1960, nearly six months after the first sit-in, Woolworth agreed to allow blacks at the lunch counter. Later accounts reported the chain lost about $200,000 in business during the sit-ins.
Today, the lunch counter looks about the same as it did in the 30-year-old news photographs, but black and white customers sit side by side on red vinyl seats, eating and talking about sports and events of the day.