On Jan. 31, 1961, students from Friendship Junior College and others picketed McCrory's on Main Street in Rock Hill to protest the segregated lunch counters at the business.
One man paid a fine, but the remaining nine — eight of whom were Friendship students —chose to take the sentence of 30 days hard labor at the York County Prison Farm.
[12] "What made the Rock Hill action so timely ... was that it responded to a tactical dilemma that was arising in SNCC discussions across the South: how to avoid the crippling limitations of scarce bail money," wrote Taylor Branch in Parting the Waters, his Pulitzer Prize winning account of the Civil Rights Movement.
"The obvious advantage of 'jail, no bail' was that it reversed the financial burden of the protest, costing the demonstrators no cash while obligating the white authorities to pay for jail space and food.
[21] The men were represented at the hearing by Ernest A. Finney, Jr., the same lawyer who had defended them originally, who subsequently went on to become the first African-American Chief Justice of the South Carolina Supreme Court since Reconstruction.