RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Some of the first civil rights protesters to serve jail time for sit-ins at all-white lunch counters were back in court today. A judge in Rock Hill, S.C., cleared their trespassing convictions, convictions dating back more than half a century. NPR's Debbie Elliott has more.
DEBBIE ELLIOTT, BYLINE: These days, Clarence Graham is welcome at this lunch counter in downtown Rock Hill, S.C.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Hey, how are you doing?
CLARENCE GRAHAM: I'm back.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: I see that.
GRAHAM: (Laughter).
ELLIOTT: He's a bit of a celebrity here at the Five and Dine.
GRAHAM: The same lunch counter we sat in in 1961 - 54 years ago.
ELLIOTT: It was a McCrory's Five and Dime drugstore back then, and blacks were forbidden from sitting at the lunch counter. Graham, 17 years old at the time, was part of a group of students from Friendship College who sat down.
GRAHAM: I was in that fourth chair. As I can recall, before my bottom touched that seat, they had me on the floor and swooped me right out of the door - out the back door - dragged me out.
ELLIOTT: Instead of agreeing to pay a fine, which typically happened during civil rights protests, they tried a new strategy.
GRAHAM: Jail, no bail.
ELLIOTT: Jail, no bail became a new tool in the fight against Jim Crow. And these young protesters became known as the Friendship Nine. They'll be in a Rock Hill courtroom again today after a South Carolina children's book author, Kimberly Johnson, urged the county solicitor to clear their trespassing records.
KIMBERLY JOHNSON: This is something that needs to be rectified.
ELLIOTT: She cited Martin Luther King Jr.'s writings about unjust laws. Solicitor Kevin Brackett says the county will agree to a defense motion to have the Friendship Nine's convictions vacated under the same rules that might exonerate someone based on new DNA or other evidence that casts doubt on the validity of a conviction.
KEVIN BRACKETT: We don't have a DNA report. What we have in this case is not something you can hold in your hand. It's more of an evolving consciousness, an evolving awareness of the wrongfulness of the policies of that time. What flew in 1961 would never fly today.
ELLIOTT: For 72-year-old Clarence Graham, it's an acknowledgement of something the Friendship Nine have lived with for decades.
GRAHAM: We were wrongfully jailed - I mean, arrested and imprisoned.
ELLIOTT: Today, their records will be clean. Debbie Elliott, NPR News.