1960s civil rights protesters who staged historic sit-in finally have arrest records cleared

Associated Press

A judge in South Carolina has erased the records of seven Black men arrested in 1960 for sitting at an all-white lunch counter. About 150 people packed the courtroom for the ceremony Friday. Two of the men are still alive, while the other five were represented by white roses placed by their names on a table. Sitting down changed the world. Columbia wasn’t where the first sit-in happened. The movement started in Greensboro, North Carolina, the spread through the South in the early 1960s. Several Southern cities have held similar expungement ceremonies in recent years as the young people who risked arrests records are now older men and women.