A DREAM DEFERRED

Business, North Carolina, Sep 01, 2001 by Massoglia, Mike

In downtown Greensboro, just a few dozen steps from the historical markers commemorating the Union Army veteran who helped organize Bennett College for black women, the first known passenger on the Underground Railroad and North Carolina's first African-American state legislator and Supreme Court justice, four pairs of bronze shoe prints mark the sidewalk outside a vacant dime store. An inscription reads: Sometimes taking a stand for what is undeniably right means taking a seat.

For Guilford County Commissioner Skip Alston and City Councilman Earl Jones, taking a back seat might be what finally induces big-money donors to support their dream of creating a world-class museum in the old Woolworth's, where four black college students launched the sitin movement Feb. 1, 1960. Simply put, Alston and Jones, who are black, have burned a lot of bridges over the years with their blistering attacks on the city's white establishment. Many civic-minded people who have the financial wherewithal to make things happen in Greensboro have had nothing to do with the museum because the two men have been involved.

"It would be really good if the museum didn't get bogged down in personalities and politics," says Greensboro City Councilwoman Claudette BurroughsWhite, who is black and who, as a student at what is now UNC Greensboro, joined the sit-in on its second day. Alston and Jones, she says, "don't command the respect of the community enough to have the rest of the community invest in this. Greensboro is the type of town that's not going to move forward as long as these people are involved."

Since 1993, when Woolworth's announced it would close the landmark store, Alston and Jones have been trying to raise money to establish the International Civil Rights Center and Museum. They've raised about $2.2 million, enough to buy the building for $700,000 and commission architectural designs, but need millions more for extensive renovations and to open the museum. Meanwhile, the success of two other capital campaigns - both started and finished while the sit-in museum has languished - and the defeat of a city bond issue last year have led impatient critics to blame the unyielding, inyour-face style of Alston and Jones for not being able to generate enough support for a project that many believe would help revitalize downtown Greensboro.

"It is a fabulous concept, and I believe this community really wants a world-class civil-rights museum to be here," says J. David Jameson, a new member of the museum's board by virtue of his position as president of the Greensboro Area Chamber of Commerce. While professing no first-hand understanding of how suited Alston and Jones are to bring the project to fruition, he finds parallels in the business world.

For a start-up company, being able to get an idea off the ground is no guarantee of ultimate success.

"Sometimes the founder has taken it as far as the founder can take it, and they have to go outside to find a new management team to make it happen. I'm not sure whether this project is at that point or not, but to really re-excite this community about it and to really attract corporate attention and contributions, something rather bold has to happen to get it off dead center."

The bold move may have come this summer when North Carolina A&T State University threw its prestige and resources behind the museum. The school - the four men whose act of defiance helped bring about the end of legal segregation were A&T freshmen - is lending an executive to run the day-to-day operations and providing fund-raising help, including access to its network of 36,000 alumni. Alston and Jones remain chairman and vice chairman, respectively, of Sit-In Movement Inc., the not-for-profit organization they founded to establish the museum. McArthur Davis, the organization's only full-time employee, remains executive director but reports to David Hoard, A&T's vice chancellor for development and university relations. Like the development officer he is, Hoard expresses full confidence that the museum will ultimately come to pass. "The hardest dollars to raise are those first dollars," he says. "The fact that the building has been bought and the architectural drawings have been made provides a tremendous foundation to launch the next phase."

Alston, who runs a property-management business and is president of the North Carolina chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, says A&T's involvement and the fund-raising prowess it brings means that cleaning up and removing asbestos from the building could begin by year's end. That, he adds, should keep the Greensboro museum on a 12- to 15-year timetable, about as long as it took to complete civil-rights museums in Birmingham, Ala., and Memphis, Tenn.

"So we're right on target as far as what we wanted to do in the first place. There is no change there - we're just picking up the pace," Alston says. "We've been working with A&T for the past five, six months on this letter of understanding - what can you bring to the table, is it something that we can live with, is it something that we need - and we narrowed it down to the letter of understanding." A&T has committed Hoard and the ideas, resources and staff support of the university's foundation.