Click for larger image • A highway marker honoring the 1957 sit-in at Durham's Royal Ice Cream Parlor was unveiled during a dedication ceremony June 23, 2008, at Union Baptist Church, near the site of the segregation protest at the corner of North Roxboro Road and Dowd Street. The surviving three of the "Royal Seven" protesters—Mary Clyburn Hooks, Virginia Williams (both behind the marker) and protest organizer the Rev. Douglas Moore (pointing)—received a rousing ovation and full celebrity treatment from young and old alike. Attorney William A. Marsh (to the right of Moore) represented the "Royal Seven" during the resulting case 51 years ago in hopes of testing segregation law itself, but an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was denied. Starting in 2002, local black history enthusiast R. Kelly Bryant (far left) applied for the state marker four times before the state-appointed committee of history professors finally deemed it a worthy moment in North Carolina history. The marker will be the state's fourth official commemoration of a civil rights event.
Comments (1)
Showing 1-1 of 1
- To create paragraphs in your comment, type <p> at the start of a paragraph and </p> at the end of each paragraph.
- To create bold text, type <b>bolded text</b> (please note the closing tag, </b>).
- To create italicized text, type <i>italicized text</i> (please note the closing tag, </i>).
- Proper web addresses will automatically become links.
