GREENSBORO, N.C. (AP) – The nation’s largest utility already turned off the lights during Black History Month at a museum honoring the lunch-counter sit-in that sparked the 1960s civil rights movement.
Now it’s threatening to cut off the power altogether if the museum doesn’t pay thousands more each month to cover the possibility of delinquent payments.
“Disconnecting a customer’s service is the very last step in our collections process and it’s an action we never want to take,” Duke Energy said in a statement Thursday.
The museum honors the beginning of the sit-in movement, when four black freshmen at North Carolina A&T refused to leave the whites-only lunch counter at the F.W. Woolworth’s store in downtown Greensboro on Feb. 1, 1960. Their courage to endure abuse and arrest sparked the rights crusade that spread across the South.
The historic lunch counter is the highlight of the International Civil Rights Center & Museum, an important tourist attraction and educational destination in North Carolina’s third largest city. But the museum has struggled to meet payment terms of loans it needed for renovations.