‘Today’ show host from Wichita giving Dockum sit-in participants a national spotlight
She’s a proud one time Wichitan and a 1996 graduate of Heights High School.
But still, says Sheinelle Jones — the co-host of NBC’s News’ 3rd hour of “Today” — until a couple of weeks ago, she’d never heard about the famous Dockum Drug Store sit-in that happened in her hometown in 1958.
And that’s even though, she’s since realized, she grew up going to church with some of the people who participated in the sit-in — one of the first successful student-led sit-ins of the Civil Rights movement.
“All those years, I never knew anything about this,” Jones said during a phone interview this week. “...Frankly, I was blown away.”
Jones decided it was a story that needed to be shared and that, since she has a national platform and a tie to Wichita, she’d share it. A two-part segment on the Dockum Drug Store sit-in, featuring interviews with some of its participants, will air on Monday morning on the show.
The first segment will run in the 8 a.m. hour, and the second will air during the 9 a.m. hour as part of the new “Changemakers” series airing on “Today” starting Monday, which will celebrates Black trailblazers and everyday heroes who pushed for change and brought progress to the country.
The sit-in was staged at the lunch counter of the Dockum Drug Store, which in 1958 operated at the corner of Douglas and Broadway, where the Ambassador Hotel is now.
In 1958, the store wouldn’t allow Black people to dine at the lunch counter. In protest, a young man named Ron Walters, president of the local NAACP Youth Council, helped organize a group of students, who took seats at the counter and refused to move. They remained seated from open to close every day for three weeks, enduring taunts and insults from white patrons.
Finally, with the store losing money, the manager agreed to serve them. The national branch of the NAACP has said that the sit-in was the first student-lead effort in the country that succeeded.
But still, it’s an accomplishment that’s often overlooked, many historians agree.
A new generation is just starting to hear about the protest and understand its significance, said Jones, 42.
“It’s so wonderful that they were willing to sit down and talk about something that was so brave and courageous at the time,” she said of her interviews. “Now people are starting to learn more about what happened, and they’re starting to get the credit they deserve.”
Jones said she wanted to come back to Wichita to conduct the interviews but ultimately decided not to because of COVID-19 concerns. Instead, her mother and grandmother helped hook her up with people who participated in the sit-in, and she talked with them via video chat.
Among the people Jones interviewed for the segment were sit-in participants Galyn Vesey and Peggy Wesley, who was just 15 when she took part. Both were people Jones had long known but who had never mentioned anything about what happened in 1958.
Jones also was able to track down the granddaughter of the man who owned the Dockum Drug Store at the time and interviewed her about her feelings all these years later. That conversation will be included in the second segment on Monday.
Jones said she loved learning that some of the people she’d known her whole life had participated in something so monumental, and she said she’s happy to help them get the credit they deserve, especially during Black History Month.
“I said, ‘I grew up with you. How is it that I didn’t even know about this?’” Jones said. “The beautiful part of it is none of them were out there for the spotlight or anything. At the time, they just wanted to be able to sit down and have a Coke like anyone else.”
This story was originally published January 29, 2021 at 1:49 PM.
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