Theaters aided desegregation movement

Local businesses were the focal point of social change during the turbulent decades that surrounded the civil rights movement.

Protesters — black and white — staged sit-ins and picketed segregated businesses along Franklin Street and in surrounding areas during the 1960s in an effort to give black community members equal opportunities.

After months of protests, the Varsity Theatre and Carolina Theatre became some of the first integrated movie theaters in the Southeast.

The Chapel Hill Weekly reported that the protests emerged after manager E. Carrington Smith refused a request from a local ministerial association to allow one desegregated showing of the movie “Porgy and Bess,” a film version of the Broadway show with an all-black cast.

An executive committee called Citizens for “Open” Movies organized the protests.

Walter Dellinger, who was a UNC sophomore at the time, was the only Southern undergraduate on the committee. And the experience in the group led him to pursue a career of advocating for civil rights, he said.

“I agreed to do it on the spur of the moment,” Dellinger said. “It had a profound effect on my life.”

He said it was quite a shock to him and his parents to see his picture in the paper with the leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Both theaters became partially desegregated in 1961, allowing black UNC students to enter, according to The Chapel Hill Weekly.

“I feel the eventual hope is that this trial period will open the way for the whole public to attend movies,” Ann Douglass, one of the first two blacks to enter the Carolina Theatre, on Aug. 17, 1961, said in The Chapel Hill Weekly.

“I feel that just having Negro students to participate is still not desegregation.”

A full integration policy at the Carolina Theatre came in March 1962. The Varsity became fully integrated in December 1961.

Dellinger said the theater protests were relatively calm and peaceful, with the occasional derogatory comment from passersby.

Years later, picketing was still a popular method used to integrate area businesses, sometimes sparking violence and blocking traffic.

A small group of Lincoln High School students started the first sit-down strikes in the area in February 1960, according to The Chapel Hill Weekly.

A Daily Tar Heel survey from 1964 stated that 25 percent of 116 local businesses surveyed provided unequal service to black residents.

The Colonial Drug Store on West Franklin Street was one such business and was a major demonstration spot during the 1960s.

“I remember at Colonial, you could go in, but you couldn’t eat,” said Valerie Foushee, a member of the Orange County Board of Commissioners who was in grade school in 1964.

“I had a friend whose father was the cook at Leo’s, so he’d sneak us barbecue out the back door.”

On Feb. 28, 1960, about 100 black protesters picketed outside the drug store, forcing manager John Carswell to rope off booths to keep them away, The Weekly states.

“We do not wish or even think that a sit-in will open the Pines or Brady’s or the Tar Heel Sandwich Shop, but do we hope that Chapel Hill, with the tradition of liberalism, will see the implications of segregation … and move them to search their consciences,” then-UNC student John Dunne said of segregated businesses of the time in a panel discussion reflecting on the protests.

Dunne gave up his Morehead scholarship so he could work with the anti-segregation group Congress of Racial Equality, an active protest group of the time, according to The Daily Tar Heel.

Despite the inequalities and prejudices of the era, some local black businessmen reached positions of influence.

Charlie Mason, a slave’s grandson, was a businessman who recognized the need for black residents to have a place to socialize, said his daughter, Virginia Mason Chambers.

Mason owned Mason’s Grocery Store on West Franklin Street and allowed customers to pay off debts weekly.

“His hand was extended to everybody,” Chambers said. She added that her father was eager to help others and sometimes even forgot about the loans he gave.

Mason also owned a hotel, restaurant and the Starlite Supper Club — all places that welcomed black customers.

“(Black business owners) had to provide resources in the black community that we were denied in the white community,” said Fred Battle, president of the local chapter of the NAACP.

Another black business owner who gained prominence in the community was George Tate Jr.

Tate, the founder of Tate Realty & Construction Co., was instrumental in providing affordable housing in Chapel Hill during and after the decades of segregation.

Battle said that if it wasn’t for Tate’s help, then there wouldn’t have been as many black homeowners.

Tate’s influence also helped other local business owners.

“He was very giving, very helpful,” said William Brown, owner of Brown’s Auto & Collision Center Inc., at 11744 U.S. 15-501 South.

Brown said Tate, who he had known since he was a little boy, helped him get his first loan to start his business in 1980.

Battle reflected upon the period of protests and the emergence of strong black leaders in the local business community.

“It’s about mobilization: The more people you have (supporting each other), the more power.”

City Editor Ryan C. Tuck contributed to this article.

Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.