1955-1979

Students march for civil rights

Marchers head to a rally to hear civil rights leader Floyd McKissick speak in June 1963.

Tensions over civil rights reached a peak in Fayetteville during the summer of 1963. Black demonstrators, mostly college students from Fayetteville State, had begun lunch-counter demonstrations as early as 1960.

On May 19, 1963, a headline in The Fayetteville Observer reported: "Singing Negro Students March On Fayetteville." The 800 students were picketing Hay Street cinemas, which forced blacks to sit in the balcony.

The students continued marching in June, day after day, seeking unrestricted admittance to restaurants, theaters and hotels. They were soon joined by adults - both black and white, civilians and soldiers - in their placard-carrying marches.

Fayetteville managed to avoid large-scale violence, but police sometimes fired tear gas to break up the demonstrations. Police also arrested 226 marchers through July 10.

Willis McLeod, a student leader who would later become the Fayetteville State University chancellor, was among those arrested. He recalled one ride in a police car that he said may have been more for his protection than his detention.

"I was told there were men with bats, in a truck, coming to bash in my head," he said.

On July 18, more than 1,100 people gathered at a church rally in support of the protests.

Meanwhile, the city's nine-member "Bi-Racial Committee" continued to work to find solutions. The NAACP agreed to call off the demonstrations to give the committee's plan a chance.

The Bi-Racial Committee reported progress through the summer and fall in getting some businesses to agree to serve black customers and hire black workers. This was during the time of the 1963 March on Washington and Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech.

But some downtown restaurants resisted changing until forced to do so by federal law in 1964.

The Rev. C.R. Edwards was a member of Fayetteville's Bi-Racial Committee. He recalled the economic effect of the protests:

"When the business community discovered that the blacks were going to be accommodated or they weren't going to have any business, then they decided that we probably need to talk a little bit."

Fayetteville's summer of '63 was just one dramatic episode in a long struggle that resulted in sweeping changes, from lunch counters to schoolhouses to ballot boxes.