In 1957, three years after the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed “separate but equal” schooling, Samuel Wesley Lynch enrolled at HBCU West Virginia State College. His father belonged to the Ku Klux Klan.
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At first, the cheerleaders ignored him. They didn’t believe their routines suited a male, he said. He won them over when they discovered he could do cartwheels from one end of the gym floor to the other.
“I’ve discovered that I was not only the first white cheerleader at State, I was the first white cheerleader in the Intercollegiate Athletic Association.”
Of all the activities he participated in as a student at State, nothing affected him more than his role in the lunch counter sit-in at The Diamond. “We knew The Diamond department store was the keystone in the arch,” he said. “If we could remove that keystone, the arch would fall and Charleston would be desegregated.”
To prepare for the sit-in, the group studied pacifism. “If they spit on you or hit you, it would be OK. You were to be non-reactive. We had no weapons, not even shoestrings, belt buckles or jewelry, nothing that could be used as a weapon.
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