Morehouse students key force for change in Civil Rights movement

ATLANTA — Lonnie King and Charles Black were both Morehouse men in the 1960's. They told Channel 2's Erin Coleman that students made the difference during the civil rights movement in Atlanta.

"It won't get told unless people who know the story start telling it," Black said.

Coleman joined the two as they toured the new National Center for Civil and Human Rights for the first time. One exhibit in particular took them back.

The center features an interactive lunch counter. Visitors place their hands on the counter and put on headphones. As long as they keep their hands on the counter, they will hear people screaming at them, very similar to what the black protesters experienced during the Civil Rights Movement.

"The thing that flashed me back was the sound of the police sirens," Black said.

When King heard about the four young men in Greensboro, North Carolina, who sat down at an all-white lunch counter in protest, he wanted to do that in Atlanta. King, who is not related to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., became the leader of the Atlanta student movement. On March 15, 1960, the group held their first sit-in.

"We went to the City Hall cafeteria. We went to the State Capitol. We went to the five and dime stores like Woolworths. We went to Rich's Department store. There were 11 places in all,” King said.

Of the 200 students, more than 80 were arrested.  Black was one of them.

"We were prepared to sit there and take whatever came our way," Black said.

At lunch counters or on the picket lines, the two men say they remember the time vividly. Protests in Birmingham, Selma and Jackson may have the notoriety of being more violent, but the men said Atlanta's movement wasn't exactly docile either.

"I got acid thrown on me," King said.  "It ate up my face. I'd be blind if I hadn't had on shades."

"He had to be rushed across the street to a filling station. They wouldn't let him use the water to wash the stuff off," Black said.

The Atlanta students vowed to make a difference, and they did.

"The freedom rides, the modern freedom rides, started in a meeting in Atlanta, Georgia with Atlanta students," Black said.

The Freedom Ride initiative took off nationally from a conversation on a college campus with quiet support from administrators and presidents.

"We must have had about 90 percent of students enrolled at the AU center. They were behind us in the movement," said King. "When you have that kind of support, when you can get the troops to come out, that's power, and we had power."

WSBTV