National Museum African American History-- Part 3: Emmett Rill's Coffin and Lunch Counter Stools

Visitors to the museum will see a 19th century slave cabin and the glass-topped coffin in which the body of 14-year-old Emmett Till was placed after his brutal murder in Mississippi in 1955.  His death became a catalyst for the modern civil rights movement.

There is also a 77-ton Pullman Palace passenger car from the Jim Crow era and  Woolworth's lunch counter stools from Greensboro, N.C. where four black students carried out the 1960 sit-in that helped topple segregation.

Pullman porters were black men and was a big step up to middle class status.

A Lot of History.  --Cooter

Death of Franklin McCain in 2014, One of the Greensboro Four

From the January 10, 2014, WBTV 3 News.

A North Carolina Civil Rights  Attended North Carolina A&T University and was best-known for his involvement at the Greensboro sit-in.

On February 1, 1960, he sat at a whites-only lunch counter at the Woolworth's on Elm Street along with Ezell Blair Jr., Joseph McNeill and David Richmore.  This extremely brave move on their part started a nationwide movement.  The next day they were joined by 25 other A&T and other Greensboro school students.

The movement gained momentum.  By the end of the month there were similar demonstrations in 250 other cities across the country.

Mr. McCain once said:  "One of two things was gonna happen to me.  I was going to jail for a long time or I was gonna have my head split open in a pine box.  That was it, those were the only two options."

It took an incredible amount of heroism to right a horrible wrong, but he did it.

Quite the Hero.

Deaths: Civil Rights Pioneers

From the Jan. 19th and 26th, 2014, Chicago Tribune. //// JOHN W. ROGERS SR., 95. Member of the Tiskegee Airmen in World War II who became an attorney and Cook County (Chicago) Juvenile Court Judge. Died Jan. 21st. //// FRANKLIN McCAIN, 73. Died Jan. 9th. Civil Rights trailblazer and part of the "Greensboro Four" whose sit-in with friends at the Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, NC, spread across the South. //// Both these men withstood all sorts of hardships to further the lives of blacks in the United States. //// True Heroes.