By Catie Byrne, Staff Writer

Published in print Feb. 4, 2015

In an hour-long interview with Jibreel Khazan (formerly Ezell Blair, Jr.), one of the two surviving of the first four Woolworth sit-in protesters, I discovered more to the eccentric 73-year-old than anything Wikipedia or history books could describe. One of the last words he said to me as we parted was that he was a storyteller, not a politician, like A&T classmate Jesse Jackson.

In fact, I would argue Khazan is far more than a historical pillar in the history of civil rights or a storyteller, but a goofy yet sage philosopher. As Khazan and I sat in armchairs across from each other in the Sheraton lobby, I did not anticipate the words I was about to record.

On the conflicting motivations of Clarence “Curly” Harris, Woolworth’s store manager throughout the sit-ins, Khazan said, “I consider him a person of great character, I didn’t look at him for the color of his skin, I listened to his stories.

His story was, I am a guy who started out small for 30 years, I worked hard to make my store the number two store in the south … I’m in a situation where I can’t serve you because the other stores, they will get my business and I’ll get shut down. It’s been my 30 year struggle to make this the number one store in the south, [now] it’s gone’.

So, I felt kind of sorry for the gentleman, and I said, ‘hey I want to get up and leave, this is not good’, and the other guys said you sit there, you’re not going anywhere, alright?’ So I said okay. My father was a teacher and a housing contractor, and I knew when he talked about losing business, that would hurt his income, and also would hurt his family.

The philosophy of Gandhi, and a man called Jesus is called Eshu, that’s his proper name in the Galilean-Aramaic tongue he spoke, and the Buddha, even Muhammad, was when you are engaged in opposition you try to converse with the person equally. You don’t look down upon a person, you didn’t necessarily look up at them, but you respect all sentient, conscious beings, because they are our family.

We play games with ourselves like, I’m going to sit down at the lunch-counter, I hope I get through it, but I may get killed in the process. So, what did that mean for me?

So I had to prepare myself, hundreds and thousands of other young people, what happens to me if I die sitting at this lunch-counter? What’s going to happen to my soul, can you really tell me where the soul is?”

Khazan adds a spiritual connotation to nearly everything. There’s a charm to his monologues. It’s as if he were looking through the past with ancient wisdom, and speaking of the future as if he were an oracle, relishing in his clairvoyant vision of a better world to come.

“What I wanted to do with my friends, when we were kids at the lunch-counter was expand our horizons, we didn’t like being caged up, just going to a, ‘Negro African American school’. We wanted to go visit the other kids in my neighborhood. Now, I lived in a segregated neighborhood in Greensboro called Warnersville, it no longer exists because the only thing that’s there is the gym of J.C. Price School. But, when they had, you know, phones with ten or twenty lines, so when you picked up the phone, you carry on a conversation and never knew who you were talking to, we made communication with the Caucasian kids.

It was a broken barrier, if you leave children to themselves, they will make amends.

Now you are the generation of my children’s grandchildren, I expect you all to pick up the mantle. I expect you to think of your college as being a miniature city-state.”