Written during my MEJO 153: Writing and Reporting class at UNC-Chapel Hill.
MOSELEY, V.a. (April 17th, 2020) - If you were given a dollar for how many times 79-year-old Jean “Carol” McDaniel brought up her family in a conversation, you would have little need to buy a Powerball ticket ever again.
“I had an uncle. We called him the first Baskin Robbins. We had peach (ice cream), vanilla, whatever,” McDaniel said. “I don’t know how we did it. We didn’t have air conditioning.”
Despite growing up poor, it didn’t matter to McDaniel. Whether she was helping to can peaches on her family farm, churning fruit-infused ice cream on a hot summer day or listening to her favorite radio broadcast, “The Shadow,” with her siblings, it was clear that her childhood was one with plenty of laughs.
One individual that did not spend much time laughing was her father, George Wayne Breeze. He would work countless hours on a mill near their house in Ossipee, North Carolina. But after the news was spread that Breeze’s daughter was involved in the Woolworth demonstrations in 1960, it was clear that he was irate.
“My dad probably said ‘I can’t believe she did that. She’s going to get herself killed,’” McDaniel said.
While some of the specific details have faded about who exactly was involved in Greensboro sit-ins during the Civil Rights Movement, the North Carolina native will never forget how it started.
“Some men decided they were going to sit down and they weren’t going to leave until they got served,” McDaniel said. “We (black people) weren’t going to leave until they open up the stores to everyone.”
Those men that she was referring to are now known as the “Greensboro Four.” A group of four black men, Ezell Blair Jr., David Richmond, Franklin McCain and Joseph McNeil made the conscious decision to sit down at the Woolworth lunch counter. The men would stay at the counters until the store would close for the day.
There was one catch: black people were not allowed to enjoy their meals in the restaurant with white people. The same foods that African American workers prepared in the kitchen were not allowed to be eaten by black customers in the same venue. The F.W. Woolworth store was no exception.
As a teenager, she would take a bus about “10 to 12 miles” from Elon to Graham for her high school classes. Black high school students would be paid a tiny amount to drive college students to their destination. However, when it was time to make a decision for college, there was not much of an option.
“When you went to college, you didn’t have a choice. You went to black universities,” McDaniel said.
McDaniel made the decision to attend North Carolina A&T State University. As a student, McDaniel was right in the middle of arguably the most transformative periods of growth for African American rights.
It wasn’t long before she realized that the “Four” would become the catalyst for change and transform the city into a protest battleground. After her best friend, Jesse Jackson, was going to participate, she knew immediate action had to be taken.
“As time went by, other students decided to walk downtown about a mile away, and join in with them, McDaniel said. “We would take turns when we didn’t have class.”
Since that day, McDaniel has met all four of the men that ignited the change. She said her main motivation to peacefully protest the discriminatory laws was not to be seen as a hero but instead to “help those people” that took the bold courage in getting the revolution started.
Her experience with racist gestures by white people was relatively mild compared to what other people had to deal with in her opinion. Despite the cost, she was determined to endure any verbal abuse as long as it meant sticking to “her purpose.”
“I was never spat on or hit. They would just walk by and call you names,” McDaniel said. “They will mistreat you if they know they can get away with it.”
The worst thing she heard someone say to her was the “n-word” but comments like that seldomly phased her, especially with the support of many protestors at her side.
“I was too naive to be afraid,” McDaniel said. “They took us down to the jail. They fingerprinted us and all that. A lot of us were laughing. We teased them and said the food at the jail was probably better than the college so we wanted dinner first.”
If something were to have happened to her, McDaniel was confident to say that her dad would’ve come all the way to Greensboro and fought to the bitter end for her safety.
“You better have your black suit ready if you mess with my family,” McDaniel said.
A week removed from the “Greensboro Four,” the number of black protestors rose from just four students to over 70,000 participants in a national movement that sparked revolutionary change and eventually, the ultimate goal of desegregating local businesses.
Norman A. McDaniel, Carol’s husband, was engaged to her at the time. Despite serving in the Vietnam War and being a member of the United States Air Force, no special treatment was given to the couple.
Extreme partiality reared its ugly head in the South. It didn’t matter if it was a restaurant, hotel, or a local facility. African Americans were viewed as “second-rate” citizens in the United States and military status hardly made conditions much better.
“You were protecting this country and you still couldn’t stay at a Holiday Inn,” said Carol McDaniel. “You would have to stay at a military base. Everything had a ‘name’ on it.”
Magazines such as Jet and Ebony would have an information section that would highlight places for African Americans to stay as they traveled the country.
Norman McDaniel was over 1,000 miles away from Greensboro, stationed in Waco, TX as part of his military assignment. That being said, Norman McDaniel has no doubts that if he had the opportunity to have been a part of the movement, he would have been right by her side.
“Carol and I would write each other about what was going on,” said Norman McDaniel. “I would’ve been there if I could.”
The F.W. Woolworth store in Greensboro closed for good in 1993 but has since been rebranded as a museum for tourists to be enriched by the rich past of these valiant black activists. Carol McDaniel visited the F.W. Woolworth museum “a few years ago” but says she “didn’t have a reaction to it” due to the compact nature of the store and being pressed for time when she visited.
As Carol McDaniel approaches her 80th birthday on May 6th, she hopes that her story continues to be told for generations to come.
“That is one thing people have lost. The art of telling stories,” Carol McDaniel said. “Most people don’t understand how far we come.”
Both Norman and Carol McDaniel agree that the current generation of teenagers and young adults should appreciate the sacrifices that were made during the era of Jim Crow instead of complaining about what they do not have.
“We have too many people that feel like they are owed something based on past history,” Norman McDaniel said. “If you get something for nothing, chances are you won’t appreciate it.”
“Everything is someone else’s fault. The parents don’t require them to do anything at home,” Carol McDaniel said. “It’s all me, me, me.”
It is clear that those that are close to Carol McDaniel have the utmost respect for her boldness to stand up for black equality in America during the Civil Rights Movement.
“She kept going back (to protest) and she did it in a classy way,” said Carol McDaniel’s daughter, Crystal Clark.
“She had the maturity and the sense of what our country stands for...to stand up for what is right,” Norman McDaniel said. “Anyone that stands up for those things would be admired and respected.”
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