On Wednesday, Feb. 26, Greensboro’s International Civil Rights Center and Museum got a very special guest taking a tour of the facility – brand new North Carolina Governor Josh Stein.
Stein was a guest of Chairman of the Guilford County Board of Commissioners Skip Alston, a co-founder of the museum, on the tour of the famous site in downtown Greensboro where four now legendary black NC A&T students sat down at the all-white lunch counter at F.W. Woolworth’s and refused to leave – thus setting off a chain reaction of protest sit-ins across the South.
Last week, Stein hosted Alston at the Governor’s Mansion in Raleigh so it was only fitting that Alston return the favor and have Stein take a tour of the museum. On Tuesday, Feb. 18, the governor hosted Alston in the state’s capital where Stein held an event to celebrate 40 prominent African-American entrepreneurs around the state who were also leaders in, and had had a widespread positive influence on, their various communities.
Alston said he does not believe Stein had ever visited the museum before.
While Stein may not have toured it previously, the museum has had some very high-profile visitors over the years.
However, President Donald Trump isn’t one of them.
In 2016, then presidential candidate Trump requested to visit the museum in downtown Greensboro and make a speech there but that never materialized.
The Civil Rights Center and Museum denied Trump the visit. Museum officials stated publicly that Trump’s staff was “aggressive and rude” to museum staff and also stated at the time that Trump made unreasonable “special requests” such as a need for the museum to close to the public for at least five hours.
One reliable source said the Trump campaign offered the museum $10,000 at that time for the use of the facility; however, the museum leaders still didn’t want the then Republican presidential nominee to visit and make a speech from the historic site.
The International Civil Rights Center and Museum in downtown Greensboro saw a special guest in July of 2024, when nationally known civil rights advocate Al Sharpton – a good friend of Alston – was in Greensboro for an event at the Koury Convention Center, and, after Sharpton said he wanted to check out the museum, Alston was eager to accommodate him.
The two men, who are both well known for their efforts over the years in the long struggle for civil rights for black Americans, have been friends for over 30 years, and Sharpton has been honored by the city’s civil rights museum in the past.
Though Sharpton had seen the museum before, he’d never been on a tour of it; and, while in town, the civil rights leader and television personality – along with his two daughters – got to see the museum and the exhibits inside.
Sharpton was even allowed to sit at the famous lunch counter where the 1960 National Sit-in Movement began after four black North Carolina A&T University students took a seat at the whites-only counter and refused to move.
“We don’t usually let people sit in the lunch counter seats, but since he has been honored by the museum, we made an exception,” Alston said back then.
With the help of a museum guide, Alston gave Sharpton and his daughters a private tour.
One of the most eventful tours of the museum came in 2021 when then Vice President Kamala Harris agreed to shift her tight schedule while in Greensboro and drop by for a visit.
At that time four years ago, Harris was speaking in Greensboro and she decided to make time to tour the museum after Alston convinced her to change her plans and add the museum as a stop. Her security detail probably didn’t like the VP’s last-minute change in plans, but Alston sure did.
Like Sharpton, Harris got to sit in the seat while she was visiting Greensboro in early 2021. There’s a highly publicized picture of Harris, wearing a pandemic mask, sitting at the lunch counter during that visit.
Civil rights maverick Rosa Parks also got to sit in a seat at the counter when she toured the museum years ago. That visit took place before the museum officially opened.
At the museum, there’s a replica of the bus seat Parks was sitting on when she famously refused to move to the back of the bus to make room for white people.
Lol….pandering for votes.
There he goes again. Skippy is pandering for OPM (other people’s money) to salvage his pet project.
Who gives a s#$&
i have one for sale.
Audit the Woolworth Museum to learn the accurate number of paying visitors annually. Audit the Woolworth Museum to learn the total donations by individuals. What I suspect will be found is that the number of visitors is currently inflated and that donations to the museum are and has always been from pandering corporations that fear Skip Alston and his followers, and governments. If individual donors do not give enough money to support the museum, why is there a Woolworth Museum at all? It appears that the museum is one, a vanity project by Alston and Jones and two, survives on donations by corporations and elected politicians who favor and fear Skip Alston and his Black cohorts. Is this any reason for property owners in Guilford County to pay higher property taxes because the Woolworth Museum does not? There is not enough oversight of nonprofits and not-for-profit organizations.
The other reason it’s alive is because County commissioners and Greensboro city council give large chunks of taxpayer dollars every year Recenter article in Fishwrap stated that last year 100,000k + visited the museum. I’ll call bulls$$t on that number unless an audit can prove me wrong SKIP is nothing but a Racist scheming carpetbagger. He does nothing good for the community unless it benefits him
I suspect a great number were school kids on field trips. You can see the buses out front of the museum rather frequently.
Taxpayers pay the cost for those field trips for school children, therefore we are still subsidizing the skips money pit.
I will give you a small tad amount of credit for at least TRYING to save your buddies Chris, weak though it was.
I don’t believe 100,000 people visited it last year either. Every time I drive by, it’s dead.
If there are 100,000 visitors annually, that equates to about 2,000 weekly (52 weeks in one year). Anyone believe that? If we calculate for student visitors only, using the number of annual weeks drops to 40 allowing for school closings such as summer, student visitors equate to 2,500 weekly using the 100,000 figure. Anyone believe that? If the average school bus holds 48 students, student visitors arriving by school bus extrapolates to 52 buses weekly. Anyone believe that? Consider that schools will not send students to the museum every year. Since the Woolworth Museum receives a lot of taxpayer money and pays no property taxes, it seems a serious audit is in order.
I’ll bet they are counting the staff as visitors every time they come and go.
Notice Skippy’s side-eyed look at Stein. Very telling.
i rarely see any visitors . . . same for the ‘barns of worship’.
Has anyone ever actually seen anybody in the Woolworth’s? Sorry , ICRC ?
Mr. Hare I personally have always wondered what is international about skips money pit. Small minded people always seem to inflate things to make themselves feel bigger. I call it the hitler complex