CHARLOTTE OBSERVER FILE PHOTO
Charles Jones, a Charlotte civil rights icon who helped lead protests at segregated lunch counters and once spent a month on a South Carolina chain gang for his activism, has died at 82, WBTV reported.
Jones was a campus leader at Charlotte’s Johnson C. Smith University in 1960 when four North Carolina A&T State University students sat down at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro. They refused to leave until they were served.
Within a week, Jones and two other Smith students, Heyward Davenport and B.B. De Laine, were ready to start organizing sit-ins in uptown Charlotte. They expected a few others to join them the first morning. Instead, more than 200 students showed up ready to emulate the Greensboro Four.
