A Wichita site of civil rights sit-in will get memorial

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — The site of an important civil rights sit-in in 1958 in Wichita will be getting a memorial for the first time.

Young black protesters sat at the lunch counter in the Dockum Drug Store in 1958. The Wichita Eagle reports (http://bit.ly/1U4N62F ) after three weeks of sit-ins, the drug store agreed to serve the black students at the counter. It is considered one of the first successful lunch counter sit-ins in the nation that eventually helped lead to desegregation.

On Thursday, two participants in the sit-ins, Joan Williams and Galyn Vesey, attended a ceremony where the Kansas Health Foundation presented a $50,000 grant to the Kansas African American Museum and Ambassador Hotel for the memorial project.

Organizers have not determined what form the memorial will take, or what it will include.

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Information from: The Wichita (Kan.) Eagle, http://www.kansas.com

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The Gayly - 6/10/2016 @ 10:00 a.m. CDT