ROCK HILL, S.C. — On Feb. 12, back in 1960, historians estimate about 150 people peacefully protested a Rock Hill store and lunch counter.
Their sit-in sparked a number of protests, the most famous of which took place the next year.
That 1961 sit-in was staged by a group of men known as "the Friendship Nine." WCNC Charlotte went to the building, which still stands there today, to speak to one member of this group.
"We came to be arrested," remembers David Williamson Jr.
He’s part of the Friendship Nine: A group of Black students mostly from Friendship Junior College who sat down at McCrory’s Five and Dime.
It was a store and all-white lunch counter in Rock Hill.
Now, the restaurant is called Kounter. That’s where you find Williamson recounting the sit-ins that put him and his friends behind bars.
"By the time she got the words out, you was up," said Willliamson. "By an officer that drug you off the stool, but they didn't get to the part that we wasn't gone get out. They just told us we was going to jail."
The group was convicted of trespassing. But, instead of spending $100 to get out of jail time, they opted to spend 30 days of hard labor on what was called the chain gang.
Now, that history is mapped out across museum walls just outside of Kounter. It documents the 30 days that Williamson and the rest of the Friendship Nine spent in jail.
Those 30 days sparked a nationwide movement.
"You’re able to break the system if you break their pockets," said historian Dontavius Williams. He also works at the historically Black Clinton College.
He said, while the first sit-in protesters would keep paying bail, the Friendship Nine started the "jail, no bail" movement.
Doing the time rather than paying the bail meant keeping money out of the criminal justice systems.
"You have to feed, you have to clothe and you have to house all of these people, and ultimately it was a form of nonviolent resistance," he explained.
Meanwhile, Rob Masone is Kounter’s owner.
When he reopened the restaurant back in 2020 he restored the same counter where the Friendship Nine sat decades ago.
It’s why Masone said he and his staff try to tell customers the story behind the stools.
"And that’s what’s mesmerizing about it," says Masone, adding, "It really wasn’t that long ago."
Which brings us to today. Williamson said even decades after the Civil Rights Movement, "It don’t look that much different."
"Until we get back to where there’s more love and more respect for one another this country is going to destroy itself from within," he warned.
The Friendship Nine were exonerated back in 2015 but, when we asked Williamson about it, he said wiping his record clear was almost like taking his badge away.
Because, even though protesting was treated like a crime, he said his actions caused the kind of disruption that was necessary for equality.