Five Decades After Civil Rights Arrests, Friendship Nine Convictions Thrown Out

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As expected, a South Carolina judge has thrown out the convictions of the Friendship Nine, civil rights activists who were jailed in 1961 after a sit-in protest at an all-white lunch counter in the town of Rock Hill.

It took almost five and a half years for the nine African-American men, whose ‘jail, no bail’ strategy helped galvanize the national fight against racial inequality, to be exonerated.

“We cannot rewrite history, but we can right history,” Judge Mark Hayes said before signing the order that vacated their trespassing convictions. Hayes is the nephew of the judge who sentenced the men in 1961.

“Today is a victory in race relations in America,” Bernice King, daughter of Martin Luther King Jr., said at a news conference following the ruling. “It is a new day.”

According to CNN:

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The exoneration effort was spearheaded by writer Kimberly Johnson, author of the children’s book No Fear For Freedom: The Story of the Friendship 9 as well as a musical about the men that opens in Rock Hill on Friday. Last year, she approached Kevin Brackett, the solicitor for York and Union counties, to see what could be done to clear their records.

“This is an opportunity for us to bring the community together,” Johnson told the Associated Press before Wednesday’s ruling. “To have the records vacated essentially says that it should have never happened in the first place.”

The Rock Hill Herald reports:

“What we have in this case is not something you can hold in your hand,” Brackett added. “It’s more of an evolving consciousness, and evolving awareness of the wrongfulness of the policies of that time.”

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