JACKSON Miss.—Fifty years ago, an angry white mob attacked a racially mixed group that sought to integrate a whites-only lunch counter in Mississippi’s capital city.
On Tuesday, the anniversary of the Woolworth’s sit-in, education and tourism officials are unveiling a marker to commemorate the pivotal event in the state’s civil rights movement.
The marker is part of the Mississippi Freedom Trail, a series of signs the state began putting up in 2011 to recognize people who challenged segregation and racial oppression. The new marker will be beside Capitol Street near the old Woolworth’s, which, like many former downtown Jackson retail stores, has been closed for decades.
On May 28, 1963, a small group of students and faculty from Tougaloo College, a private and historically black institution in north Jackson, drove 10 miles to the downtown and sat at the lunch counter at the five-and-dime store near the Governor’s Mansion.
Though they sat peacefully, their actions were radical: At the time, dining facilities were strictly segregated. A white mob arrived. Some of the Tougaloo students were beaten, and one was knocked unconscious. Others were doused with ketchup, mustard and sugar.
Joan Trumpauer of Arlington, Va., who would later marry and become Joan Trumpauer Mulholland, was a white Tougaloo student who participated in the sit-in. During a 2009 interview with The Associated Press, she recalled the “ugly roar” of the crowd.
“Basically, it just seemed that it was never going to end,” she said.
The sit-in was similar to others across the South, though Jackson’s occurred more than three years after a more famous one in Greensboro, N.C.
