Friendship Nine
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40 free Friendship Nine trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
On January 31, 1961, a group of young Black men sat down at a whites-only lunch counter in Rock Hill, South Carolina, and were arrested within moments. What they did next made them famous: given the choice, they took thirty days of hard labor rather than buy their way out. The slogan was 'jail, no bail', and it changed how the sit-in movement fought segregation. This quiz collects the fun facts behind the story: the arrest and the trial, the weeks behind bars, the organizers and lawyers who stood with the men, the activists who came to join them, and the day a courtroom finally set the record straight more than fifty years later. It also covers the town, the store and the wider movement the protest belonged to. It is written for students, teachers and anyone curious about the civil rights era. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will leave knowing why a handful of prisoners in a small Southern town mattered so much.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Friendship Nine, jailed after a 1961 sit-in in Rock Hill, were named for what kind of local institution?
A junior college
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.
Q 02Ten men were convicted after the 1961 Rock Hill sit-in; what did the one left out of the Friendship Nine do?
Paid his fine
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.
Q 03Judge John C. Hayes III cleared the Friendship Nine in 2015; how was he related to the judge who sentenced them?
His nephew
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.
Q 04What did the diner that replaced the Friendship Nine's Rock Hill five-and-dime mark with each man's name?
The stools
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.
Q 05Which future congressman was beaten at Rock Hill's bus station in 1961, months after the Friendship Nine's sit-in?
John Lewis
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.
Q 06What were the Friendship Nine fed as punishment when they refused to work during their 1961 sentence of hard labor?
Bread and water
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.
Q 07Friendship Nine lawyer Ernest Finney Jr. became South Carolina's first Black what since Reconstruction?
Chief justice
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.
Q 08The Friendship Nine's 'jail, no bail' stand was meant to shift the cost of sit-in arrests onto whom?
The city government
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.
Q 09The Friendship Nine were convicted on the first anniversary of a famous sit-in in which North Carolina city?
Greensboro
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.
Q 10After leaving jail, Friendship Nine organizer Thomas Gaither scouted the route for which 1961 protest campaign?
Freedom Rides
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.
Q 11Which charge were the Friendship Nine convicted of after sitting at a whites-only Rock Hill lunch counter in 1961?
Trespassing
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.
Q 12Rather than pay $100 fines, the Friendship Nine served 30 days of hard labor at what kind of facility?
A prison farm
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.
Q 13The 1960 sit-in wave that inspired the Friendship Nine began with four students at which chain's lunch counter?
Woolworth's
Q 21Thomas Gaither, the one Friendship Nine member who was not a local student, was a field secretary for which group?
CORE
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.
Q 22The Friendship Nine's 'jail, no bail' stand echoed a 1960 student sit-in tactic from which Tennessee city?
Nashville
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.
Q 23What was the profession of Kimberly Johnson, who pressed officials to clear the Friendship Nine's records in 2015?
Children's author
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.
Q 14Which future Presidential Medal of Freedom winner chose jail in Rock Hill in support of the Friendship Nine?
Diane Nash
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.
Q 15What name is given to the segregation laws that kept the Friendship Nine from eating at a Rock Hill lunch counter?
Jim Crow
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.
Q 16The group that trained the Friendship Nine in nonviolence modeled its tactics on which Indian independence leader?
Mahatma Gandhi
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.
Q 17Rock Hill, where the Friendship Nine staged their sit-in, lies about 25 miles south of which larger city?
Charlotte
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.
Q 18Friendship Nine ally Rev. Cecil Ivory said his 1960 lunch counter protest broke no law because he stayed in what?
His wheelchair
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.
Q 19Why did John McCrorey, founder of the chain the Friendship Nine targeted, drop the 'e' from his surname?
To save money on signs
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.
Q 20How soon after their arrest at a Rock Hill lunch counter were the Friendship Nine tried and convicted?
The next morning
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.
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.
Q 24Which official apologized in court to the surviving Friendship Nine when their convictions were vacated?
The prosecutor
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.
Q 25The Friendship Nine's convictions were vacated in 2015 under a court rule normally used for what?
New evidence
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.
Q 26When the Friendship Nine's convictions were vacated in 2015, why did the judge refuse to expunge the court record?
To preserve the history
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.
Q 27In Hamm v. City of Rock Hill, the Supreme Court wiped out McCrory's sit-in convictions because of which new law?
Civil Rights Act
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.
Q 28Four years before the Friendship Nine, a 1957 boycott by Black residents of Rock Hill shut down which business?
The city bus line
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.
Q 29Thomas Gaither, who led the Friendship Nine into jail, later spent nearly four decades as a professor of what?
Biology
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.
Q 30Which newspaper sent reporter Claude Sitton to Rock Hill to cover the Friendship Nine's refusal to post bail?
The New York Times
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.