On February 1, 1960 four North Carolina Agricultural and Technical (A&T) State University African American students entered the Greensboro, North Carolina Woolworth’s and after making several small purchases took seats at the segregated lunch counter.
The students, Ezell Blair, Jr., David Richmond, Joseph McNeil, and Franklin McCain, calmly remained seated after being denied service. Police were called but they did not take action against the four students because there was no provocation and the store owner did not press charges thinking that the protest would end once the store closed.
However, the following morning the four students accompanied by 27 other students showed up at Woolworth’s to continue the sit-in. Five days later, on February 6, an estimated 1,000 protesters and observers were participating in the peaceful protest. The desegregation protest that had begun with only four students rapidly grew to a massive movement throughout the Southern states as more and more protesters engaged in similar demonstrations.
Local and national media picked up this injustice and inequity and ingrained it on America’s and the world’s consciousness, beginning with lunch counters and extending it to other forms of public accommodation, including transport facilities, art galleries, beaches, parks, swimming pools, libraries, and even museums around the South.
The Greensboro sit-ins were a catalytic instrument in the American Civil Rights Movement, leading to increased national sentiment supporting the efforts of African-Americans obtaining the equal rights guaranteed by the Constitution.
Woolworth’s capitulated and integrated its lunch counter on July 26, 1960 almost six months after the sit-in started. Four years later the Civil Rights Act of 1964 mandated desegregation in all public accommodations.
This is just one of the stories that will be used during the current Black History Month celebration to help illustrate the glorious heritage of an oppressed people. But during those moments of collective programmed celebration pause and consider what does this history mean to YOU?
After basking in the exploits of black heroes with well known names such as Hannibal, Tubman, Bethune, Woodson, Douglas, Turner, Dubois, Garvey, Parks, and King do YOU make a personal commitment to add another notation to the volumes these heroes have written as they made and changed history?
But contributing a page into man’s history book should be a by-product of your priority mission; having your name inscribed in The Lamb’s Book of Life which is Christ’s History Book.
Each member of Christ’s body has an opportunity to reveal a personal portion of Christ’s story. Throughout the ages God has revealed Himself through the lives of so many people so that the complete revelation of God will include fragments and pieces from the lives of all men and women, including YOUR earth relationship with Jesus Christ.
The experiences that Abraham had; the experiences that David had; the experiences that Paul had are all a preceding link to our current history. Down through the ages and generations we have received all that the holy apostles, the prophets, the kings, the priests and the many black heroes experienced in Christ as models of the unique personal spiritual relationships that can exist and how they are reconciled into the Lamb’s Book.
In Revelation 13:8 we learn that during the Tribulation all those whose names are not written in the Lamb’s Book of Life will worship the Antichrist: “And all that dwell on the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.”
For the past two millenniums God, by His Holy Spirit, has been writing portions of the Book of the Life of the Lamb (the son of God) in the minds and hearts of His people. Our Lord and savior Jesus Christ, in His earthly life and ministry, in His death, resurrection and ascension is the beginning of this glorious book.
Paul in second Corinthians clearly explains that the Lamb’s Book is not of letters but of the spirit of the living God. “Forasmuch as YOU are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart. Who also has made us able ministers of the New Testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter kills, but the spirit gives life” (II Cor. 3:3,6).
Black history is one of a multitude of life stories that manifest a purpose filled life in the Lord resulting in His acknowledgement, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.”
Let the amazing black history of the ages motivate YOU to let your life be directed by the spirit of the living God so that your name will be part of the most important book of history; The Lamb’s Book of Life.
James W. Breedlove
Comments or opinions may be sent to the writer at: www.truthclinic.com
