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Funeral held Friday for Clarence Graham of Friendship 9

By Tina Terry, wsoctv.com and Ken Lemon, wsoctv.com
By Tina Terry, wsoctv.com and Ken Lemon, wsoctv.com

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Family and a community honored an American civil rights leader Thursday. His funeral was held Friday at Rock Hill's Boyd Hill Baptist.

Clarence Graham, a member of the civil rights group Friendship Nine, died March 25 at age 73.

"I love you,” friend Joseph Jones said Thursday. “Appreciate you. Save me a little place like you did in the jail, but we won't be in jail.”

Charles Jones was a student at Johnson C. Smith University in 1961 and a member of the student nonviolent coordinating committee.

He played a role in the desegregation of restaurants in the Charlotte area.

Around that time, he heard about Graham and the other students from Friendship Junior College, in Rock Hill.
 
"They decided to go down, be arrested and not pay bond," Charles Jones said. "To be tried and spend the 30 days on the York County chain gang to dramatize the fact that they could not be served."

The scene of their protest was a restaurant in downtown Rock Hill now called the Five and Dine.

In the early 1960s, it was McCrory’s convenience store that had a lunch counter off-limits to blacks.

Graham and the others went inside, were arrested for sitting at the counter and spent time in jail rather than pay a $100 fine.

In a special report about the Friendship Nine last year, Graham told Channel 9 how the group prepared for the protest.

“We know that a lot of the folk in the state are not happy about this, so there is that little look over your shoulder feeling that we had even in 1961,” Graham said.

That moment in time helped end segregation in restaurants and other public places.

Last year, the York County solicitor threw out the men’s convictions, and Graham said heaven smiled on the moment he was involved in.

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