“We cannot rewrite history, but we can right history.” – Judge John C. Hayes III
We kicked off African American History Month 2026 last issue with one on Dr. Gladys West, who developed the GPS we rely on to get to unfamiliar places we need to get to. Now today’s history lesson is about the relatively little known “Friendship Nine.” But before we get to that, I’ll provide a long-worded but necessary context for today’s lesson. Your patience would be greatly appreciated.
Well between the time of my writing and your reading this narrative, there’s certain to be more flashes of “huh, are you kidding me” surprises (how about an aging “president” posting a former Black president and his wife as apes) that are no longer surprises but expectations in our divided states of America nowadays. Hey, if you don’t believe me take a short pause from reading this, tune into the sources of your news for even more madness and get back to this column a later. Go ahead, we’ll wait.
Now speaking of the incredible nature of things, take for example, Virginia, the state of my birth that for the first time in its four-century history recently elected a woman as governor. Think about that for a second; 400 years – I repeat, 400 years – to figure out that a woman could actually be governor of Virginia. Duh, with a capital D!
And lo and behold, after she was elected the “sky is falling” chicken little trolls went berserk and are still going berserk. With day after day of whining, bellyaching, snarling and nonsensical accusations of “a stolen election,” “DEI” elected, “commie takeover” dog whistles, one would think that – Lord save us – the end of civilization as we’ve come to know it is right around the corner. I’ve had to check with folks who live in Virginia to be sure that the state didn’t dissipate into thin air or under a state-wide Hiroshima and Nagasaki-type cloud of smoke because, take a deep breath readers, a woman was elected governor.
Now being the devil’s advocate that I am, when I interrupted the string of negative comments with expressions of support for the new governor many responded with stuff too vile and nasty to repeat in this space. A few questioned my IQ, my sexual orientation for some weird reason and – brace yourselves – even weirder, why I support boys in girls’ locker rooms. And one nice lady “kindly” asked that I remain in Georgia, relocate to California and never return to Virginia, even for holidays and funerals.
Some “very fine people” many of those Virginians, huh?
In what we once desired as the virtue of basic civility and respectful disagreement has downturned into races to the bottom on who can be the nastiest and meanest. If it’s not going after Samali Americans in Minneapolis, snatching kids from “illegal” parents from school bus stops, its banning books, taking down portraits or weeding out anything reeking of the DEI boogeyman. However, we understand this modern-day madness is a coordinated effort to erase embarrassing history much to the glee by those who wish that “those people” (you fill in the blanks) were gone or, at best, were never here in the doggone first place.
So, with that a long-winded laxative of an introduction, let’s turn now to the “Friendship Nine.”
The Friendship Nine was a group of African-American men who went to jail after staging a sit-in at a segregated McCrory’s lunch counter in Rock Hill, South Carolina in 1961. The group gained nationwide attention because they followed the 1960 Nashville sit-ins strategy of “Jail, No Bail”, which lessened the huge financial burden civil rights groups were facing as the sit-in movement spread across the South. They became known as the Friendship Nine because eight of the nine men were students at Rock Hill’s Friendship Junior College.
The first sit-in happened in February 1960 when four Black students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University sat down at a segregated Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina. The movement spread across the South, reaching Rock Hill on Feb. 12, when about 100 Black students staged sit-ins at various downtown lunch counters. Over the next year, several sit-ins were held in the city.
On Jan. 31, 1961, students from Friendship Junior College and others picketed McCrory’s on Main Street in Rock Hill to protest the segregated lunch counters at the business. They walked in, took seats at the counter and ordered hamburgers, soft drinks and coffee.
The next day, 10 were convicted of trespassing and breach of peace and sentenced to serve 30 days in jail or to pay a $100 fine. One man paid a fine, but the remaining nine — eight of whom were Friendship students —chose to take the sentence of 30 days hard labor at the York County Prison Farm. Their choosing jail over a fine or bail marked a first in the Civil Rights Movement since the 1960 Nashville sit-ins, and it sparked the “jail, no bail” strategy that came to be emulated in other places. A growing number of people participated in the sit-ins and marches that continued in Rock Hill through the spring and into the summer.
Since the protestors chose prison instead of bail, they were sent to a work camp, where they refused to work, and were put on bread and water as punishment.
In 2007 the city of Rock Hill unveiled an historic marker honoring the Friendship Nine at a reception honoring the men. At that time, eight of the Friendship Nine were living.
• Robert McCullough (died in 2006)
• John Gaines (died in 2022)
• Thomas Gaither (died in 2024)
• Clarence Graham (died in 2016)
• Willie Thomas Massey
• Willie McCleod (died in 2020)
• James Wells (died in 2018)
• David Williamson Jr.
• Mack Workman (died in 2024)
“What made the Rock Hill action so timely was that it responded to a tactical dilemma that was arising in SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) discussions across the South: how to avoid the crippling limitations of scarce bail money,” wrote Taylor Branch in Parting the Waters, his Pulitzer Prize winning account of the Civil Rights Movement.
“The obvious advantage of ‘jail, no bail’ was that it reversed the financial burden of the protest, costing the demonstrators no cash while obligating the white authorities to pay for jail space and food. The obvious disadvantage was that staying in jail represented a quantum leap in commitment above the old barrier of arrest, lock-up, and bail-out.”
In 2015, Judge John C. Hayes III (nephew of the original judge who sentenced the Friendship Nine to 30 days jail time) overturned the convictions of the nine, stating: “We cannot rewrite history, but we can right history.”
So, excuse me, beg your pardon, sorry, but I have to ask why do you suppose that there’s subset of us who cling to the belief that true history must be told complete with its blemishes, warts and all? Who’s harmed and not harmed by the telling of that history?
Now while we’re waiting for your answer count yours truly as one of the promise keepers with more true history chapters to come to insert into your three-ring binders. Perhaps by this time next year, you’ll have a complete volume to add to your bookcase in the empty space left by one that was banned.
I’ll end with a big thanks to the Friendship Nine… and to one Judge John C. Hayes III of Rock Hill, South Carolina!
Terry Howard is an award-winning writer, a contributing writer with the Chattanooga News Chronicle, The American Diversity Report, The Douglas County Sentinel, Blackmarket.com, recipient of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Leadership Award, and third place winner of the Georgia Press Award.