Looking back at those who stood in the past, so we can stand now!
A Sit-In that made us all Stand
“The Machinists Union will never stop talking about the past because it’s on the shoulders of others than we are able to walk proudly into the future,” said then Southern Territory General Vice President in 2018, Mark Blondin. Mark Blondin, in 2022 announced his retirement.
All contents of this post appeared in an iMail article posted on goiam.org dated February of 2018
On February 1, 1960, when four young black men from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro took a seat at a Woolworth’s lunch counter. In an act of non-violence that sparked the civil rights movement, when the “Greensboro Four” sat in the whites only section at this general store, the world watched, and their story became legend.
They were influenced by the nonviolent protest techniques practiced by Mohandas Gandhi, as well as the Freedom Rides organized by the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) in 1947, in which interracial activists rode across the South in buses to test a recent Supreme Court decision banning segregation in interstate bus travel.]
The International Civil Rights Center and Museum has made a pledge to uphold the legacy of the “Greensboro Four” and the IAM couldn’t be prouder than to stand with them, shoulder to shoulder, to make sure this story never stops being retold.
In February 2018, at the behest of the IAM Executive Council, the Machinists joined the museum that year in a Gala that celebrated the 58th Anniversary of the Sit-In Movement.
“For me, understanding the courage it took for those four men at Woolworth’s is the reason I, with my Machinist family, honor their story and their struggle,” said Theodore “Teddy” McNeal, an active retiree of Local Lodge 2297 and President of the North Carolina State Council of Machinists. “It’s important because I don’t know that enough people know about the hardships of the Civil Rights Movement. As time passes, younger people don’t remember things like segregated bathrooms, schools, and restaurants. But I do and we need to make sure they understand what it all meant,”
McNeal says he has lived his union life because of such sentiment and understanding. “This is why I am Union – to clearly understand someone who does things solely because it’s the right thing to do.
I look at everyone as a creation of God, Brothers and Sisters, and I will always treat everyone like they are family. The “Greensboro Four” helped me learn that said McNeal. “Knowledge is power, and we have to look at the past and figure out the why. That’s our job.”
Pictured below are a few North Carolina Machinist who attended the Gala Event commemorating actions of the brave “Greensboro Four.”
