Media/Headlines
A&T Students Drip Sitdown Protests;
Plan Negotiations
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Sunday, February 21, 1960.
A&T College students yesterday called off their sitdown protest demonstrations against two local variety stores which operate segregated lunch counters.
The leaders of the student movement said they now would pin their hopes of being served alongside whites on the use of "peaceful channels of negotiations."
In calling off the demonstrations, the Students' Executive Committee for Justice — which was the ramrod of the protest action — said it could speak only for A&T students. This left hanging the question of whether other Negroes who had joined demonstrations would go along with the student decision. Mayor George Roach said the student announcement "creates the proper atmosphere under which people of good will and understanding may apply themselves to a solution of this community problem."
Managers of both the F.W. Woolworth & Co. downtown store and the S.H. Kress & Co. store said they had reached no decision as to operation of their lunch counters Monday.
Since Feb. 6
Lunch counters at both stores have been closed since Feb. 6 when an explosive racial situation in the downtown area prompted a two-week "cooling-off" period during which no demonstrations took place.
The truce expired last night.
The A&T committee, said to be composed of 17 or 18 students, met Thursday and Friday evenings and yesterday morning before asking the student body to agree not to resume the mass protests Monday.
About one-third of the A&T student body was reported to have attended a meeting yesterday on the campus to vote on the committee proposal.
Roach Comments
Roach, commenting on the student announcement, said it "clearly establishes that while they desire the correction of the lunch counter situation in the local stores, they fully appreciate that attainment of this objective can only be accomplished by orderly processes of negotiation and mutual understanding."
Asked if he had plans for setting up some type of machinery for negotiations between leaders of the movement and store officials, Roach said, "I don't have anything else on it right now."
The students' announced intention of seeking integration of the lunch counters by negotiations left unsaid what their course of action would be in the event such negotiations bore no fruit.