New Year's Day March

In February 1959, Richard Henry, an African American civilian Air Force employee, planned to fly out of the Greenville, South Carolina Municipal Airport to Michigan. Henry was instructed to sit in the "Negro" waiting room at the airport, which was considerably less comfortable and more poorly furnished than the white waiting room. Henry refused to sit in the colored section and was told by the airport manager, O.L. Andrews, that he was not permitted to sit in the whites-only waiting room.[1] Disgusted, Henry filed complaints with the U.S. Air Force, the NAACP, and local airport authorities. With the assistance of the NAACP, Henry filed a suit claiming discrimination and the denial of the equal protection clause granted by the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Representatives from the NAACP later purchased tickets to Charlotte, North Carolina and attempted to use the white waiting room. They were also instructed to move.[2] Little was done at the local level to desegregate the airport with any speed or haste.[3]

Jackie Robinson, Brooklyn Dodgers, 1954

On the morning of October 25, 1959, Jackie Robinson, the first African American Major League Baseball player, was expected to speak at an NAACP banquet at Springfield Baptist Church in downtown Greenville. Robinson was flying from New York to Greenville, and a small, African American delegation awaited his arrival at the airport. Airport manager O.L. Andrews told the group that they were waiting in the wrong room and would have to move to the colored section. When the delegation refused to move, Andrews threatened arrest. The group stood up, but they did not leave the room. Andrews summoned a police officer and instructed the officer to arrest anyone who re-seated themselves. Before the confrontation could further escalate, Robinson's plane arrived and the delegation departed the airport. Robinson spoke of this discrimination at the banquet, and he urged "complete freedom" by encouraging all African Americans to vote, to protest racial inequality, and to never lose self-respect.[4]

That evening, following the conclusion of the banquet, Robinson and Gloster Current, accompanied by Pastor and Mrs. James Hall, were to fly out of the same airport. When Robinson and Current arrived, they sat in the white-only waiting room. While Robinson was signing autographs for fans, airport manager Andrews orders the group to move to the colored room. They refused. Andrews brought a police officer and instructed him to arrest anyone who continued to sit.[5][6] Robinson and Current argued that they had a legal right to remain seated. At the time, segregation had been considered unlawful for many years, though many facilities throughout the South were slow to integrate. Ultimately, the group was permitted to board the plane without further issues.[7][8] Following the incident, Robinson sent letters to Thurgood Marshall, a civil rights lawyer at the time, describing the incident at the airport. He urged the NAACP defense team to take legal action. Marshall, however, dismissed Robinson's plea as a "waste of time;" he noted that Richard Henry's case was still working its way through the federal court system.[3]

Aerial view of the Greenville Downtown Airport

Richard Henry initially lost his suit against the Greenville airport. Judge George Timmerman, a former South Carolina governor that opposed Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and federally-mandated segregation, ruled in favor of the airport. Timmerman, citing Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which had already been overturned by Brown v. Board (1954), wrote that no law or constitutional principle "requires others to accept [Henry] as a companion or social equal."[1][2] Timmerman further declared that Henry had no intention of waiting in the white room, but was instead attempting to "instigating litigation."[2] Furthermore, the court argued that Henry did not receive irreparable injury by being prohibited from the whites-only waiting room.[17] Henry, however, won the case on appeal, and the airport desegregated under a mandatory court order in February of 1961.[1] The ruling prohibited the airport "from making any distinction based upon color in regard to services at the Greenville Municipal Airport."[17] In October of 1962, the Greenville–Spartanburg International Airport opened, rendering the Greenville Downtown Airport as a location that focuses more predominately on the flying small aircraft. The new airport opened without any segregationist policies.

The New Year's Day March was the first large-scale civil rights protest in Greenville, and it occurred without any violence or arrests.[lower-alpha 3] Within a month of the march, students at Sterling High School would organize sit-ins at segregated lunch counters in the downtown area, inspired by the Greensboro sit-ins.[2] By March of 1960, Jesse Jackson would successfully lead the Greenville Eight on a sit-in of the segregated library system. On July 1, 1961, Charles E. Daniel, a former U.S. Senator from South Carolina, unexpectedly admitted that the separation of races was a policy that needed to be changed: “The desegregation issue cannot continue to be hidden behind the door. This situation cannot be settled at the lunch counter and bus station levels. We must handle this ourselves, more realistically than heretofore"[18] Furthermore, Governor Fritz Hollings' endeavor to integrate schools "with dignity" meant that South Carolina was often out of the national spotlight when desegregation began.