Clarence Harris

Clarence Lee "Curly" Harris (January 18, 1905 – July 14, 1999) was the store manager at the F. W. Woolworth Company store in Greensboro, North Carolina, during the Greensboro sit-ins in 1960.

Early life Harris was born in Raleigh, North Carolina. He grew up and attended high school in Durham, North Carolina. There, in 1923, he began his career at the F. W. Woolworth Company store as an assistant stock room manager. He continued working at Woolworth's after school and at night during his five and a half years at Trinity College, now Duke University, from which he graduated in 1928 with a major in accounting and business law.

On Monday, July 25, 1960, after nearly $200,000 (~$ in ) in losses due to the demonstrations, store manager Harris quietly integrated the lunch counter when he asked four black employees of the store to change out of work clothes into street clothes and order a meal at the counter. These were the first black customers to be served at the store's lunch counter. The event received little publicity.