David Richmond
*David Richmond was born on this date in 1941. He was a Black counselor and activist.
David Leinail Richmond was born in Greensboro, North Carolina, graduating from James B. Dudley High School in 1959. At DHS, Richmond was a popular student, participating in many sports and clubs; he even set the state record for the high jump in 1959 while on the track and field team. After graduating high school, he enrolled in college at North Carolina A&T State University, majoring in business administration and accounting. During his second semester of college, on February 1, 1960, along with three other A&T first-year students, Ezell Blair Jr., Franklin McCain Joseph McNeil, and Richmond walked together from the university's library to the downtown Greensboro Woolworth store.
They purchased items from a desegregated counter, then sat down at the "whites only" lunch counter, where they were refused service. Eventually, a police officer came in, but since they were doing nothing but sitting and politely disagreeing with the employees, he did not know what to do with them. Their nonviolent actions had completely baffled him. They continued sitting at the counter until the manager declared that the store was closing early; the boys were triumphant and became the Greensboro Four. They were not the first to nonviolently protest segregation.
Within four days, the protesters grew from four young men to hundreds of students from A&T, UNC Greensboro, Bennett College, and Dudley High School. By the second week, this led to the nationwide desegregation of many public facilities, considered by some to be the early beginning of the American Civil Rights Movement. After the sit-ins, Richmond eventually dropped out of A&T and became a counselor-coordinator at the CETA program in Greensboro. He received multiple death threats and eventually moved to Franklin, North Carolina, in the mountains. Richmond married while at school, ultimately divorced, remarried, and divorced again. He had three children, and his son Chip was on the Wake Forest University football team. Richmond eventually returned to Greensboro to care for his parents but had difficulty finding employment while dealing with the label "troublemaker."
He eventually found a job as a janitor at the Greensboro Health Care Center. David Richmond was haunted by the fact that he could not do more to improve his world; he battled alcoholism and depression before his death. He was married and divorced twice and was the father of three children. He fathered a daughter with his high school girlfriend Dorothy Harrison (née Morton). He had two children with his first wife, whom he married while in college. Richmond and his second wife, Yvonne Bryson, had no children together. David Richmond died of lung cancer on December 7, 1990, at the age of 49.
At his memorial service, North Carolina A&T posthumously awarded him an honorary doctorate of humanities degree. Other honors awarded to Richmond include the Levi Coffin Award for "leadership in human rights, human relations, and human resources development in Greensboro," given by the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce in 1980, and the James Smithson Bicentennial Medal from the Smithsonian Institution in 2010. In 2002, North Carolina A&T commissioned a statue honoring the Greensboro Four, and the four men also have residence halls named after them on the university campus.
