Known as the Friendship Nine, the African-American men staged a protest at a segregated restaurant in South Carolina, and were sent to jail for 30 days.
After 54 years, the criminal records of a group of black men known as the Friendship Nine will be amended to reflect that they were not guilty of any crimes when they sat down at a segregated restaurant in Rock Hill, South Carolina, in 1961.
In a March 2009 photo, Rev. W. T. "Dub" Massey, right, and Willie McLeod, left, return to the lunch counter where they were arrested during a staged sit-in in 1961.
Mary Ann Chastain / AP Photo
As was typical in the segregated South at the time, the then-college students were immediately and aggressively apprehended by the police and taken to the county jail, following their protest at McCrory's Five and Dime restaurant.
"I remember being grabbed up by my belt and thrown to the floor and dragged out of the store," Clarence Graham, a Friendship Nine member, told NBC News.
The group was charged with trespassing and disturbing the peace, and was sentenced to 30 days of manual labor in the prison farm, known then as the "chain gang."
"It was a frightening experience, but the part that got me is when they put me in the cell and closed that door. And that clang, you can still hear it," David Williamson, another group member, said in the NBC interview.
The sit-in was one in a string of protests staged by student and activist civil rights groups throughout the South, but the Friendship Nine (named after the college eight of the nine men attended) soon became known for their decision to employ a "jail, no bail" tactic, in which all nine protesters forewent their bail $100 fees and did their time.
The decision stemmed from a refusal to give money to the people jailing them, as well as the group's awareness of the financial burden the civil rights movement faced from constantly bailing out demonstrators.
"The NAACP, they couldn't afford it any longer; they had to find a method of getting something done without spending the money," Graham told CBS News.
Judge John Hayes signed the order today in South Carolina.
"We cannot rewrite history, but we can right history," he said.
The Friendship Nine was formed by David Williamson, James Wells, Willie McCleod, Willie Thomas "Dub" Massey, Clarence Graham, John Gaines, Thomas Gaither, Mack Workman, and Robert McCullough, who died in 2009.
BuzzFeed News has reached out to a representative from Friendship College for comment.
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