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

First Civil Rights Sit-In in Chicago, Not Greensboro

From the February 23, 2014, Chicago Tribune "Chicago Flashback: Birth of the sit-in" by Ron Grossman. //// It took place in May 1842, when a group of young Chicagoans, both black and white refused to take no when they went into the Jack Spratt Coffee House on East 47th Street. This place was wwell-known for its refusal to serve blacks policy. //// At the time, the United States was deeply involved in fighting World War II to save democracy abroad, all the while when blacks were denied equal rights at home by Southern laws and Northern customs. //// James Farmer was an organizer of the Fellowship of Reconciliation and 27 others decided to test their pacifist commitment at Jack Spratt's. Sure enough, the whites were served, but the blacks weren't. //// The management offered to let the blacks eat in the basement. When the police arrived, they refused to arrest the blacks, saying they hadn't broken any Illinois laws. //// Jack Spratt quietly dropped its anti-black policies after that. //// It was 18 years later that the group of college students in Greensboro, NC, had their much more famous sit-in. //// But, the First Was in Chicago.

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.