‘He was our Moses.’ Thomas Gaither, SC Friendship Nine civil rights hero, dies at 86

Gaither, a botany professor at Slippery Rock University for 38 years until his retirement, was 86.

Gaither was a 22-year-old Claflin University student in Orangeburg in early 1961. He and eight other African-American men who were students at Friendship Junior College spent a month in the York County jail after they were convicted of trespassing at an all-white lunch counter in downtown Rock Hill.

The men refused to pay the $100 trespass fine and instead chose to do 30 days of hard labor on the county chain gang. The “Jail, No Bail” movement from the group called the Friendship Nine sparked national attention and re-ignited civil rights protests around the South that had started a year earlier in Greensboro, N.C.

In 2011, Gaither told The Herald integration and equality was for the betterment of all people.

“The nonviolent protest movement was an attempt to give those who were for segregation a way out of the bias and prejudice that imprisoned them,” Gaither said in 2011. “We were not then, or ever, acting against whites. We were for equality for black people. What we did had a major impact on how protesters, while staying nonviolent, could work for change. And change America did.”

Gaither, a Great Falls native, was the sole member of the group who was not a Friendship student. He had come to Rock Hill as an organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, where he mentored the Friendship students. He then went to jail with them in solidarity for equal rights.

“My father and all those young men were willing to sacrifice in the spirit of non-violence with the belief that Blacks should have equal rights as whites,” Kenn Gaither, one of two sons and a dean at Elon University in North Carolina, told The Herald. “They were all so young. They put their safety and that of their families at risk — but they did it anyway.”

The Friendship Nine

Surviving members of the Friendship Nine are Willie “Dub” Massey and David Williamson Jr.

John Gaines and Mack Workman died earlier this year. Willie McLeod, Robert McCullough, Clarence Graham and James Wells died before that. Charles Taylor, another Friendship student arrested in 1961, did not serve the month in jail because of concerns about losing his college scholarship.

The Friendship Nine sat down at the McCrory’s lunch counter on Jan. 31, 1961. The sit-in followed months of marches by civil rights protesters downtown in Rock Hill, about 25 miles south of Charlotte.

The 10 men were arrested, then convicted the next day and sentenced to 30 days in jail or a $100 fine. Nine of them chose jail to show segregation was wrong.

They chose to make a stand against segregation and Jim Crow laws, Kenn Gaither said. During that time, a cross was burned at Gaither’s parents home in rural Great Falls in Chester County, his son added.

“The only thing my father ever did for publicity of the movement was going to jail,” Kenn Gaither said. “He believed what he was doing was right.”

The site of the sit-in at McCrory’s, now the Kounter restaurant on Rock Hill’s Main Street, has a stool with Gaither’s name on it.

The Friendship students were all in their teens in 1961. Gaither, who was only a few years younger, was a mentor to the younger students, Williamson said.

“We looked to Tom for wisdom, for guidance,” Williamson said Monday. “He was our Moses.”

Gaither’s courage to stand with the Friendship students was crucial to the “Jail, no Bail” movement being used at other places in the South, Williamson said.

“Tom Gaither was a leader,” Williamson said. “He wanted equality for everybody — period.”

Fight for equality

After the Friendship Nine were jailed, four other protesters who came to Rock Hill from other states also were charged, convicted, and jailed for a month in York County.

The Friendship Nine led to more Rock Hill protests in 1961 and in other places around the South. Freedom Riders stopped in the city in May 1961. Late U.S. Congressman John Lewis, who represented Georgia’s 5th congressional district, was a Freedom Rider who was beaten at the bus station in Rock Hill in May 1961.

Decades after the Friendship Nine protested, the group was honored in Rock Hill and South Carolina. Rock Hill has an official state historic marker along Main Street outside the former McCrory’s lunch counter site honoring the Friendship Nine.

In January 2015, a York County judge vacated the convictions of all the men, including Gaither, at a court hearing in Rock Hill.

16th Circuit Solicitor Kevin Brackett, York County’s top prosecutor, apologized at the hearing in 2015 for the convictions that were based solely on the African-American race of those arrested for seeking equal treatment.

Thomas Gaither could not attend in 2015, so Kenn Gaither represented his father.

“That was a special day for all,” Kenn Gaither said of the convictions being vacated.

A celebration of Thomas Gaither’s life will be held in 2025 in Pennsylvania, his son said.