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Anti-Segregation Demonstrations in Greensboro, N.C.

May 20, 1963 - An estimated total of 420 more Negro demonstrators have been arrested and jailed in Greensboro, N.C., in the sixth day of protest marches in front of segregated theaters and cafeterias. Some 870 had been jailed during protest marches Saturday and Sunday. While police were arresting the orderly, chanting demonstrators, most of them high school and college students, some 1,000 adult Negroes at a church rally were approving a total boycott of Greensboro’s white merchants. “This boycott is no child’s play,” the Rev. Richard Hicks told an audience at the Trinity African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. “This is war. This is a revolution.” Today’s arrests began outside the Carolina Theater, when 150 Negro youths led by James Farmer, CORE national director, marched to the box office. Students crowded around the ticket office. Inside, a white woman sat impassively, refusing their money. Upon being told they were trespassing, the students sang their “Freedom” song, then hopped readily into police cars summoned to the scene by Capt. W.H. Jackson. Addressing a church rally an hour later, Mr. Farmer said: “We’re not interested in [North Carolina Governor] Terry Sanford and President Kennedy telling what they have done for us in the past. We want to know, what are you doing for us now? And let us make it clear to Governor Rockefeller and politicians of both parties that our votes are in no one’s hip pocket.”

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