40 Fun Facts About Friendship Nine

The Friendship Nine, jailed after a 1961 sit-in in Rock Hill, were named for what kind of local institution?

A junior college gave the group its name: eight of the nine were first-year students at Friendship, a small Black school in Rock Hill. The ninth was an organizer who had come to town to train them.

Ten men were convicted after the 1961 Rock Hill sit-in; what did the one left out of the Friendship Nine do?

One man paid his fine, so history remembers nine. The others took 30 days of hard labor instead, which turned a routine arrest into national news.

Judge John C. Hayes III cleared the Friendship Nine in 2015; how was he related to the judge who sentenced them?

Hayes was his nephew: the uncle had sent the nine to 30 days of hard labor in 1961. Fifty-four years on, the younger judge said the court could not rewrite history but could set it right.

What did the diner that replaced the Friendship Nine's Rock Hill five-and-dime mark with each man's name?

The stools carry the names, one man to a seat back. The diner's owners kept the original lunch counter where police had dragged the students away within moments of sitting down.

Which future congressman was beaten at Rock Hill's bus station in 1961, months after the Friendship Nine's sit-in?

John Lewis was attacked as he stepped toward the whites-only waiting room. In 2008 Rock Hill's mayor formally apologized to him on the city's behalf.

What were the Friendship Nine fed as punishment when they refused to work during their 1961 sentence of hard labor?

Bread and water was the penalty, handed out when the men stopped work. They were protesting loads heavier than those given to the other inmates.

Friendship Nine lawyer Ernest Finney Jr. became South Carolina's first Black what since Reconstruction?

Chief justice of the state Supreme Court was the post, which he took up in 1994. Retired by 2015, he went back to court to ask that his old clients' convictions be thrown out.

The Friendship Nine's 'jail, no bail' stand was meant to shift the cost of sit-in arrests onto whom?

The city government had to house and feed prisoners who would not buy their way out. Until then, bail money had drained the movement's own funds after every arrest.

The Friendship Nine were convicted on the first anniversary of a famous sit-in in which North Carolina city?

Greensboro saw its sit-in begin on February 1, 1960, and the nine stood trial on February 1, 1961. The wave those four students started had reached Rock Hill within two weeks.

After leaving jail, Friendship Nine organizer Thomas Gaither scouted the route for which 1961 protest campaign?

Freedom Rides were his next job: he took a bus from Washington toward New Orleans, mapping station entrances and exits. He routed the riders through Rock Hill.

Which charge were the Friendship Nine convicted of after sitting at a whites-only Rock Hill lunch counter in 1961?

Trespassing was the charge. In 2015 a court threw the convictions out on the theory that the men had been found guilty under unjust segregation laws.

Rather than pay $100 fines, the Friendship Nine served 30 days of hard labor at what kind of facility?

A prison farm run by York County held them, and guards had them shovel truckloads of dirt. One Sunday about 600 supporters drove out in a motorcade to cheer them on.

The 1960 sit-in wave that inspired the Friendship Nine began with four students at which chain's lunch counter?

Woolworth's refused to serve four freshmen from North Carolina A&T, who kept their seats anyway. Within two weeks students were sitting in at lunch counters across Rock Hill.

Which future Presidential Medal of Freedom winner chose jail in Rock Hill in support of the Friendship Nine?

Diane Nash and three fellow activists sat in at a Rock Hill lunch counter within a week and refused bail too. Their arrival turned nine prisoners into a cause that other campuses copied.

What name is given to the segregation laws that kept the Friendship Nine from eating at a Rock Hill lunch counter?

Jim Crow laws let Black customers spend money in a five-and-dime but not sit down to eat there. One of the nine recalled being free to shop in the store, yet unable to order a Coke.

The group that trained the Friendship Nine in nonviolence modeled its tactics on which Indian independence leader?

Mahatma Gandhi's campaigns against British rule were the model. A protege who had been jailed with him on the Salt March wrote the book that the group's founders studied.

Rock Hill, where the Friendship Nine staged their sit-in, lies about 25 miles south of which larger city?

Charlotte lies just over the state line, and its student sit-in spokesman, J. Charles Jones, was one of four activists who went to jail in Rock Hill beside the nine.

Friendship Nine ally Rev. Cecil Ivory said his 1960 lunch counter protest broke no law because he stayed in what?

His wheelchair meant he never took one of the counter's whites-only seats, he argued. Police arrested him anyway, and he went on leading Rock Hill's protests.

Why did John McCrorey, founder of the chain the Friendship Nine targeted, drop the 'e' from his surname?

To save money on signs, the story goes: fewer letters cost less on every storefront. His five-and-dime chain grew to about 1,300 stores before closing for good in 2002.

How soon after their arrest at a Rock Hill lunch counter were the Friendship Nine tried and convicted?

The next morning they stood before a judge, who offered each man a $100 fine or 30 days. Police had hauled them off their seats within about 15 seconds of sitting down.

Thomas Gaither, the one Friendship Nine member who was not a local student, was a field secretary for which group?

CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality, sent him to Rock Hill in 1960 after he led student sit-ins in Orangeburg. He taught the freshmen the jail tactic he had only just learned himself.

The Friendship Nine's 'jail, no bail' stand echoed a 1960 student sit-in tactic from which Tennessee city?

Nashville students had refused to pay their fines a year earlier, telling a judge that paying would support an unjust system. Their veterans later drove to Rock Hill to join the protests.

What was the profession of Kimberly Johnson, who pressed officials to clear the Friendship Nine's records in 2015?

Children's author Kimberly Johnson had written a book about the nine and asked why their criminal records still stood. County officials agreed the convictions should go.

Which official apologized in court to the surviving Friendship Nine when their convictions were vacated?

The prosecutor, Kevin Brackett, apologized for what happened to the men in 1961 and told the court they were convicted for one reason only: being Black. He called them his heroes.

The Friendship Nine's convictions were vacated in 2015 under a court rule normally used for what?

New evidence, such as a DNA result, is what the rule usually demands. Here the 'evidence' was a changed public understanding of how wrong the segregation policies of 1961 had been.

When the Friendship Nine's convictions were vacated in 2015, why did the judge refuse to expunge the court record?

To preserve the history, he left the record in place while dismissing the convictions for good. Wiping the file would have erased the proof of what the men did and what it cost them.

In Hamm v. City of Rock Hill, the Supreme Court wiped out McCrory's sit-in convictions because of which new law?

Civil Rights Act protections became law in 1964 while Arthur Hamm's appeal was pending. The justices ruled 5-4 that sit-in convictions still under appeal had to be reversed.

Four years before the Friendship Nine, a 1957 boycott by Black residents of Rock Hill shut down which business?

The city bus line folded within months, after a Black passenger was put off for sitting beside a white woman. Riders switched to carpools and to two buses bought with donations.

Thomas Gaither, who led the Friendship Nine into jail, later spent nearly four decades as a professor of what?

Biology was his field: after the movement he earned a doctorate and taught at Slippery Rock University from 1968 until 2007. The school set up a scholarship in his name in 2018.

Which newspaper sent reporter Claude Sitton to Rock Hill to cover the Friendship Nine's refusal to post bail?

The New York Times ran his report, in which jailed activists urged students across the South to join them at lunch counters and behind bars. National coverage of Rock Hill had dried up before then.

Hundreds of activists arrested in Jackson in 1961 copied the Friendship Nine and served time in which Southern prison?

Parchman, Mississippi's state penitentiary, held more than 300 riders who refused to pay their fines, some of them in its death row block.

The group that employed Friendship Nine leader Thomas Gaither was founded in the 1940s in which northern city?

Chicago was the birthplace in 1942, and the group soon staged restaurant sit-ins there, almost two decades before the tactic swept the South.

Thomas Gaither learned the 'jail, no bail' tactic used by the Friendship Nine at a 1960 conference in which state?

Florida was the setting, months after Tallahassee students had spent 49 days in jail rather than pay fines for a sit-in. He took the idea to Rock Hill and trained the freshmen in it.

York County, South Carolina, where the Friendship Nine were jailed, is named for a place in which northern state?

Pennsylvania supplied both the name, from its town of York, and many of the Scots-Irish settlers who carried it south. By coincidence, the five-and-dime chain the nine targeted was later based in that same York.

What did the Friendship Nine refuse to stop doing during their daily devotions, earning them solitary confinement?

Singing hymns was the offense named in a protest telegram sent to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. The men answered their time in solitary with a three-day fast.

Taylor Branch's Parting the Waters, which examines the Friendship Nine's stand, earned which honor for history?

Pulitzer Prize judges honored the book in 1989. It credits the Rock Hill jailing with answering a problem that dogged student activists: money for bail was running out.

The Friendship Nine began a hunger strike in jail until guards revealed where which member had been taken?

John Gaines was pulled from the group after objecting to their treatment, and the others feared for a lone Black prisoner's safety. On the third day they learned he was in the city jail.

Before the Friendship Nine, Thomas Gaither led sit-ins as student body president at which South Carolina school?

Claflin College stands in Orangeburg, where his campaign was among the largest student sit-in movements of 1960. That record earned him a job organizing in Rock Hill.

Ruby Doris Smith, jailed in Rock Hill in support of the Friendship Nine, attended which Georgia college?

Spelman readmitted her that autumn with a recommendation from Martin Luther King Jr. Her 30-day sentence in Rock Hill was her first activism away from her home city.

In which Georgia city did 85 jailed students use the Friendship Nine's tactic to win desegregated lunch counters?

Atlanta students refused bail after a sit-in conviction, and their stand led directly to an agreement to open the city's lunch counters. A motorcade of them had driven to Rock Hill in support.