ROCK HILL, SC & THE "FRIENDSHIP NINE" (Cheri)

Mark and I stopped in at Rock Hill, SC for lunch on our way towards Hilton Head and Savannah.

As we made our way to the cafe called Kounter, this Airstream trailer-shaped item in a doorway caught my eye:

On the other side of the doorway, what had probably been a planter:

 was "planted with old beer tops, seen at the top of this post.

As we got to Kounter, I saw this sign, which I was going to read later:

After we ate, I headed out a side door into a corridor - simply to use the restroom - and came upon a mini-exhibit about a change in the strategies used by demonstrators during the Civil Rights Movement.

The students who participated in this event, which started as a typical drugstore sit-in, were all students at Friendship Junior College, a local Baptist school for Black American students . . . thus the "Friendship Nine."

It turns out the cafe we had just eaten at had been the site of this event.

I didn't take pictures of all of portions of the exhibit, but this provides a good, albeit short, summary of what happened:

30 days on a chain gang because they tried to eat in the same place as White Americans ate!

30 days later: