This is a community-based public art project designed to celebrate the advancement of the civil rights movement through the lunch counter sit-ins of 1960. These unique coffee cups reflect the simple request and courage of the NCA&T students who sat at the all-white lunch counter and asked for a cup of coffee. The cups are located throughout the downtown area; one is at the Greensboro Coliseum.
Eight of these bronze coffee cups were installed throughout the city on the 50th anniversary of the sit-ins. Each of the cups sits atop a white granite base that has a bronze plaque affixed to the front.
In the photo at the top of this page, the cup on the left is called ” The Pearl of Equity.” It is shaped like a flower with a pearl on an oyster shell. The pearl represents the civil rights struggle, the shell the status quo, and the flower symbolizes spring and rebirth, according to Greensboro artist Timothy L. Daniel. The plate on the pedestal features a quote by Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
The center cup, called Cup of Freedom, was the final one installed, on February 1 2010 next to the International Civil Rights Center and Museum. It was created by Greensboro artist Charles Jenkins. On the pedestal is a quote by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. : “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal.’ I have a dream that one day … the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.”
The cup on the right is called In the Face of Strange Fruit. It was created by artist Derrick Monk, inspired by the Billie Holiday song Strange Fruit. The sculpture depicts the faces of those who struggled for freedom and equality. Included is a quote by Antoine De Saint-Exupery: “He who is different from me does not impoverish me – he enriches me.”
Not pictured, The Education Cup is a bronze cup pierced by pencils, symbolizing the oppression of black students in educational institutions. This sculpture includes a quote by Booker T. Washington: “I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.” The sculpture was created by Gregory B. Colleton Jr.
Overcome, a coffee cup created by artist Rodney Bennett, includes a quote by Ambrose Redmoon: “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.”
Artist Leo Morrissey has said that in the cup he called Spoons, the spoons and persons’ profiles represent the sit-in movement, the students and their collaborative spirit against injustice. Included is a quote by John Fitzgerald Kennedy: “It is in the American tradition to stand up for one’s rights – even if the new way to stand up for one’s rights is to sit down.”
The Awake Coffee Cup, created by Kurt Gabriel, is meant to awaken the world from the deep sleep of indifference. The quotation on its plaque is from Maya Angelou: “History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.”
The eighth cup, A Cup of Coffee, Please, by Jay Rotberg, is the only one that was installed indoors, in the colleseum complex. In the center of the cup ae two people of different races sitting back to back with a wall between them. The quotation on the plaque is from Albert Camus, “Democracy is not the law of the majority but the protection of the minority.”
