This weekend, Becca and I got to attend a local event where we saw the commemoration of a historic act that was part of the civil rights struggle back in 1960. Specifically, this was about the college student led sitdown protests that happened at local businesses in what is known today as the Village District in Raleigh, North Carolina. This was one in the form of unveiling a public marker at the same place that that 41 Black American students were arrested for entering and sitting in businesses that they would not be welcome in at the time due to their race.

We came to learn about this event and part of local history through this WRAL article, which shared a little history of the notable local civil rights effort of college students against segregation from our local HBCU’s: St. Augustine’s and Shaw University in the 1960s.

The most notable part of the experience was that after the unveiling of the marker, there was a panel with 5 of the original students who were arrested at the local library just around the block. These folks were in their 80s and yet it was quite powerful to hear them speak with the same passion and zeal they must have had back when they were arrested and stood to lose a lot. Becca and I were moved and were challenged to not take for granted that we have made a lot of progress since then – but we were also reminded by them that the work to make a better world is far from over and is still under attack in various ways.

I want to conclude by making a shoutout to Friends of Oberlin Village, who were responsible for the organizing of the events on this day. Their mission statement states: “The Friends of Oberlin Village, through preservation and education, honors Oberlin, one of the last known surviving free and freedmen’s villages in the state of North Carolina that grew out of an antebellum Free Black settlement.”