Lewis A. Brandon III will discuss his work with the Greensboro sit-in movement and his lifelong civil rights efforts.

During the 1960’s sit-in movement, Lewis Brandon was a student organizer at North Carolina A&T College. As a member of the Student Executive Committee for Justice (SECJ), he played a key role in formulating protest strategies in the Greensboro civil right demonstrations of the 1960 Woolworth Sit-In Movement and the 1961 movie theater demonstrations.

His work on the movement continued throughout the 1960s through affiliations with CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), the NAACP member, the College Committee of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) (Southern Region), and the 1963 Voter Education Projects in Greensboro, NC and Warren County, NC. He worked as a community organizer with the Foundation for Community Development (FCD) based in Durham, NC, funded by the Ford Foundation and chaired the board of the Greensboro Association of Poor People (GAPP). Today I work with the Beloved Community Center of Greensboro (BCC) as its Grassroots History Coordinator.

In 2001, he received the first Human Rights Medal presented by NC A. & T. State University. Other awards include, the Sit-In Participant Award by the International Civil Rights Center and Museum, the One Community Award presented by the February One Society, the Service Award and the President’s Award from the Greensboro Senior Club, the National Association Negro Business and Professional Women Clubs, the United Negro College Fund Meritorious Service Award,  the 1974 Man of the Year Award (Greensboro Branch of the NAACP), the Sertoma Club local and regional Service to Mankind Award and recognition by the African American Atelier, Inc., Men of Distinction and was honored by the Carolina Peacemaker Newspaper Citation of Honor Greensboro 100.