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Students and the Civil Rights Movement

On February 8, 1960, Carl Matthews sat down at the Kress lunch counter in downtown Winston-Salem. Matthews, who had graduated from what is now Winston-Salem State University, was following the example of students from N.C. A&T University in Greensboro who began their Woolworth’s sit-in the previous week. He wasn’t alone for long. Eleven Black students from Winston-Salem State joined him, followed shortly by ten white students from Wake Forest College.1 On February 23, 1960, more than twenty demonstrators—including the 10 Wake Forest students—were arrested at Woolworth’s, where the sit-in had migrated, and taken to jail.2 

This protest happened before there was any student-based civil rights resistance training or broad student-based strategy available, and the corresponding arrests happened before there was infrastructure to support nonviolent protesters. The NAACP offered bail support and legal counsel, but the Wake Forest students were overwhelmed by the whole episode and not sure where to turn. There was plenty of evidence to suggest that the local authorities, Wake Forest, and even their parents would leave them to the consequences. Religion Professor Dan Via, Dean Mark Reece, and Chaplain L.H. Hollingsworth went to bail the students out, and Dean Ed Wilson and Dr. G. MacLeod Bryan recruited Clyde Randolph to represent them.3

Reactions to the students’ protest and arrest were mixed. Some parents were embarrassed; others faced ridicule in their home communities. Some faculty thought the students should have been more focused on their academic work; others thought that breaking the law was always wrong. In addition to Dr. Bryan, Associate Dean Robert Dyer was a standout supporter, traveling to Statesville to visit one protestor’s parents to convince them to let the student stay enrolled.4 

The Wake Forest administration’s reaction was not the story we would love to tell. After the students were released with a suspended judgment and then a modified “no decision” judgment, presumably to prevent an appeal from challenging the laws used to trespass them, the students were called to the Trustees room by President Harold Tribble (LL.D. ’48), where they were joined by Board Chair Irving Carlyle and Dr. Bryan. Tribble told the students that they had made their point and it was now time to return to their academic pursuits. Dr. Bryan recounts the response of one of the students: 

“President Tribble, if you’re trying to tell me to shut up and put up, I want to tell you something. We have just been through a travesty of justice, sentenced because we were falsely accused of communist sympathies. I was reared on the civic book [of] morality, believing that this sort of thing could not happen in America. We broke laws which were wrong because God told us to break those laws. Now you expect me to remain quiet. No! The rest of my life I’m going to spend trying to rectify this mess.”5

Though this is an example of times when “our best impulses have not always prevailed,” when it comes to official response, “brave colleagues led the way back through their own expression.”6 In addition to support from Dr. Wilson, Dr. Bryan, Dr. Via, Dean Reece, and Chaplain Hollingsworth, the Old Gold & Black, the student legislature, and Harold T.P. Hayes (’48, L.H.D. ’89), editor of Esquire, all publicly supported the students. Winston-Salem was the first city in the country to desegregate lunch counters, in part because of the work of a “Goodwill Committee” on which Wake Forest sociology professor Clarence Patrick (’31) served.7

In summer 2021, Wake Forest President Nathan Hatch and Winston-Salem State University Chancellor Elwood L. Robinson participated together with sit-in participants in a commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the Winston-Salem sit-ins.8 As former N.C. State Representative Larry Womble, a sit-in participant from Winston-Salem State, noted at the end of his own remembrance of the sit-ins, “the struggle continues.”9

Matthew T. Phillips | 11 June 2025

  1. John T. Llewelyn, Carl Wesley Matthews: A Remembrance and Appreciation, Winston-Salem Chronicle, Mar. 3, 2016, https://wschronicle.com/carl-wesley-matthews-remembrance-appreciation/. ↩︎
  2. Id. ↩︎
  3. G. MacLeod Bryan, Making History 4–6 (2000), https://wakespace.lib.wfu.edu/handle/10339/94107; Kerry M. King, The 1960 Winston-Salem Sit-In, Wake Forest Magazine (Sep. 9, 2021), https://magazine.wfu.edu/2021/09/09/the-1960-winston-salem-sit-in/. ↩︎
  4. Bryan, supra note 3 at 6–7. ↩︎
  5. Id. at 11–12. ↩︎
  6. Statement on Freedom of Expression and Academic Freedom, Wake Forest University (Apr. 25, 2025), https://freeexpression.wfu.edu/resources/2024-process/statement/. ↩︎
  7. King, supra note 3. ↩︎
  8. Elaine A. Tooley, A Leader of Character, 68 Wake Forest Magazine, Summer 2021, at 2. ↩︎
  9. Bryan, supra note 3 at 18. ↩︎