A judge signed an order only a few blocks from where the group was arrested.
On Oct. 25 Simon Bouie and six others had their arrest records expunged more than 60 years after they staged a sit-in in a Columbia, South Carolina, lunch counter that was designated as whites-only.
According to The Associated Press, a judge signed an order only a few blocks from where the group was arrested.
Before he left to join the protest, Bouie assured his mother that he would not get himself into trouble and he kept that promise in mind as he and the other activists sat at the Eckerd Drug Store counter.
“We had a desire to fight for what was right and nobody could turn us around. We walked in that building with our heads held high and sat down,” Bouie told the AP.
Although South Carolina is not the genesis of the practice of the sit-in during the Civil Rights Movement, that honor belongs to Greensboro, North Carolina, Bouie and company’s sit-in helped to change laws in South Carolina, and more broadly, the Jim Crow South.