he was a field secretary with the Congress of Racial Equality and was the only one of the nine who was not a Friendship student) Clarence Graham (died on March 25, 2016) Willie Thomas [W.T. "Dub"] Massey (is now a Substitute teacher in the Rock Hill area) Willie McCleod (died on December 31, 2020) James Wells (died on July 7, 2018) David Williamson Jr. Mack Workman The significance "What made the Rock Hill action so timely ... was that it responded to a tactical dilemma that was arising in SNCC discussions across the South: how to avoid the crippling limitations of scarce bail money," wrote Taylor Branch in Parting the Waters, his Pulitzer Prize winning account of the Civil Rights Movement. "The obvious advantage of 'jail, no bail' was that it reversed the financial burden of the protest, costing the demonstrators no cash while obligating the white authorities to pay for jail space and food. The obvious disadvantage was that staying in jail represented a quantum leap in commitment above the old barrier of arrest, lock-up, and bail-out." Convictions overturned In 2015, Judge John C. Hayes III (nephew of the original judge who sentenced the Friendship Nine to 30 days jail time at York County, SC chain-gang) of Rock Hill overturned the convictions of the nine, stating: "We cannot rewrite history, but we can right history." At the same occasion, Prosecutor Kevin Brackett apologized to the eight men still living, who were in court. The men were represented at the hearing by Ernest A. Finney, Jr., the same lawyer who had defended them originally, who subsequently went on to become the first African-American Chief Justice of the South Carolina Supreme Court since Reconstruction. References External links Heraldonline video of historic marker ceremony in 2007 Civil Rights History Project: Thomas Walter Gaither, video 2:11:06, Library of Congress ‘Our ultimate choice is desegregation or disintegration’ – recovering the lost words of a jailed civil rights strategist The Conversation 1961 in South Carolina 1961 in American politics Civil rights protests in the United States Civil disobedience History of South Carolina Overturned convictions in the United States Rock Hill, South Carolina McCrory Stores History of African-American civil rights Lunch counters