Kamala Harris sits in the same spot as Rosa Parks at Woolrich’s lunch counter as she makes a surprise stop at civil rights museum in Greensboro, North Carolina
- Vice President Kamala Harris sat in the same spot as civil rights legend Rosa Parks during a surprise visit to the International Civil Rights Center & Museum
- The museum was built in the building that housed Woolworth’s, where the A&T Four staged the 1960 lunch counter sit-in, a key moment of the civil rights era
- They had been inspired by Parks’ refusal to get up from her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus in 1955, along with her subsequent arrest
- Parks visited Woolworth’s alongside the A&T Four in 1995, 10 years before her death – a visit that helped raise funds to build the museum
- Harris, the first woman and woman of color to be vice president, was in North Carolina to deliver a speech and tour an electric school bus plant
Vice President Kamala Harris sat in the same spot as civil rights legend Rosa Parks during a surprise visit Monday to the International Civil Rights Center & Museum in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Harris, the first woman and woman of color to hold the office of vice president, walked in and asked where Parks had sat, telling staff she wanted to sit there too.
Parks visited the center in 1995 and posed alongside the A&T Four – the four black men who in 1960 staged a lunch counter sit-in at Woolworth’s in Greensboro – a key moment in the civil rights era.
Vice President Kamala Harris sat in the same spot as civil rights legend Rosa Parks during a surprise visit Monday to the International Civil Rights Center & Museum in Greensboro, North Carolina
Vice President Kamala Harris sits in Rosa Parks’ seat at the lunch counter at the International Civil Rgiths Center & Museum Monday in Greensboro, North Carolina
Vice President Kamala Harris adjusts a plate as she sits in Rosa Parks’ seat at the lunch counter that formerly was the Woolworth’s department store
Vice President Kamala Harris was accompanied by (from left) Melvin Skip Alston-Guilford, County Board of Commissioners, Rev. Anthony Spearman and John Swain, the museum’s director
Vice President Kamala Harris, the first woman and woman of color to be vice president, stands below a sign that reads ‘colored entrance’ at the International Civil Rights Center & Museum
In 1960 four black students – called the A&T Four – sat at an all-whites lunch counter at Woolworth’s in Greensboro, North Carolina – now the site of the museum
They were inspired by civil rights icon Rosa Parks (right), photographed after the Supreme Court ruled that segregation was illegal in. 1956. Parks visited the Greensboro site in 1995, 10 years before her death
A Montgomery, Alabama Sheriff’s Department booking photo of Rosa Parks after she refused to give up her seat to a white passenger and was arrested in December 1955
Parks had inspired the four men – David Richmond, Franklin McCain, Jibreel Khazan and Joseph McNeil, freshmen at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College – by refusing to move to the back of the bus to make room for white passengers in December 1955.
She was arrested for her disobedience, which inspired the Montgomery bus boycott.
Five years later when Richmond, McCain, Khazan – then named Ezell Blair Jr – and McNeil sat down at Woolworth department store’s all-white lunch counter, they said they were inspired by Parks.
‘We’d always reflect on Rosa Parks,’ McCain told Greensboro’s News & Record in 2005, shortly after Parks’ death.
For the story, the A&T Four recalled meeting Parks at that same lunch counter 10 years before.
‘She said she was very proud of what we did, and we said, “You laid the foundation for us,”‘ recalled Khazan.
Her visit to the site helped begin fundraising for the International Civil Rights Center and Museum, which was built at the site of the former Woolworth’s.
Harris told reporters that she, too, got to meet Parks before she passed away in 2005 at the age of 92.
Prior to the surprise stop, the vice president delivered remarks at Guilford Technical Community College and toured Thomas Built Buses, a company that builds electric school buses.
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