Timeline 1950-1998

It wasn’t until President Eisenhower ordered, 1,000 paratroopers and 10,000 National Guardsmen to Little Rock, that Central High was desegregated. All through the 50’s and early 60’s the civil rights movement simmered. Led by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. who did not believe in violence, the black residents of Montgomery and Birmingham took small steps toward equality.

They were helped by dedicated men and women of other races. One was Ruffles Johns, from New Castle who understood that racism was at odds with his Christian faith. He ran a clothing store in Greensboro, North Carolina, where he hired African Americans, served them in his store and spoke publicly against the ill treatment they suffered. He received threats at home. The Ku Klux Klan burned a cross on his property. His response? Fight back.

The Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro was a popular noontime spot. However. blacks were forbidden to sit at the counter. Johns saw it as the perfect place to test the laws. He encouraged three black students to sit at the lunch counter and quietly demand to be served. With each passing day, more African-Americans came to sit at Woolworth’s. The ripples from this simple act spread far beyond North Carolina.

The Reverend James Reeb was the son of Mary Fox Rape of Ellwood City and Harry Rape of Zelienople. Mr. Rape worked in the oil field there, and eventually settled in Casper, Wyoming, where their only son James, grew up. He attended St. Olaf’s College in Minnesota and became assistant pastor at the All Soul’s Unitarian Church in Washington D. C. But he found the work too limiting. Although he was married and the father of four, he gave up his Washington duties, and took a job with the American Friends Service Committee in Boston, where he directed the group’s low income housing project. He bought a house in Boston’s Negro section of Roxbury, and sent his children to the public schools.

In March of 1965 he joined the group of protestors in a march from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery. As the marchers crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma they were met by police and state troopers, some on horseback, with orders from Governor George Wallace to stop the march. They fired tear gas into the crowd, and severely beat protesters.

King asked anyone who could to remain in Selma for another march. James Reeb was one of many who agreed to stay. That night, he and two friends went to dinner at a black cafe. As they left the restaurant, they took a wrong turn. As they passed the Silver Moon Cafe, a hangout for whites, Reeb was hit with a club. He was rushed to a hospital in Birmingham two hours away. He was dead on arrival.