Playwright Marc E. Leib grew up in Tampa, but like many people, he had never heard of the 1960 Civil Rights protests that happened locally.

Fascinated by the history, he wrote the play, When the Righteous Triumph, to explore the story of black high school students who staged peaceful protests that eventually led to the desegregation of the city.

[music] I've been writing plays since the late 1970s, and I wanted to write about social justice, but I didn't know what precisely I would write about.

I found Andrew T. Hughes's book, From Saloons to Steakhouses A History of Tampa, and he had a chapter there called A Place At The Table, and it was all about the 1960 sit-in demonstrations that desegregated downtown Tampa lunch counters.

I thought, I grew up in Tampa.

I was a child in Tampa when these took place.

I didn't know they happened, and I don't think anybody that I know was aware that they had happened.

This struck me as a perfect subject for a play.

[music] I don't have to serve anyone.

I don't want to.

At this county, that means colored like you either stand or get nothing.

To see our story play out on a stage is exhilarating.

It's rewarding.

It makes you know that what you did was not in vain.

I'd like the Coca Cola, please.

I'll fight, that started at those lunch counters was because we wanted the dignity and the respect accorded everybody else in America.

We knew where we could go, where we could not go, where segregation locked the doors and our faces.

And if we were able to enter some private establishments, for example, we were not treated the same as other patrons.

You could buy food, hot dogs, hamburgers, what have you.

But everything you bought was to go.

And then you left the store after you made the purchase.

You couldn't sit down and eat in the store.

That was at a time when a leader was right in the middle of us, and that was Clarence Fort.

[music] We got just as much reason to demonstrate as anyone in Carolina.

The sit-ins started in North Carolina at F.W.

Woolworth on February 1st, 1960.

I went and talked with the president of our council and told him, said we we have the same problem here in Tampa.

So why don't we do the same thing here in Tampa?

You hear what's happening in Greensboro?

Well, that's what's coming.

So y'all better get used to it.

Tampa is not Greensboro.

It was the NAACP Youth Council.

Young people led by Clarence, who was the new president that convinced the older leaders, including Reverend Lowry.

This was something that they were going to go forward with.

What I'm asking is for bodies to go to some lunch counters in downtown Tampa and simply sit there and order a soda or a coffee.

Now, they're not gonna serve you.

They're gonna tell you to leave, and they're gonna threaten to call the police.

Clarence went to Middleton High School and talked to the president of the student government, the late George Edgecombe, and he went to Shafter Scott, who was the president of the student body at Blake High School.

And he said, I need 20 students from each school to go with me.

We're going to sit-in lunch counters and demand to be served.

And I was one of the ones that George selected.

He told me, he said, you're the last one because the world would know before we got there.

We had told you first.

[music] Ms.

Sardinia is a powerhouse and I love how vocal she still is about what happened and how this show is giving her an opportunity for her voice to be heard about what happened so far back then.

I told Clarence here I couldn't put the NAACP on that course.

My name is Clay Christopher, and I play Reverend Alan Lowry.

Not only do I wear a lot of his actual clothes on stage, but I have a wealth of knowledge that came from Ms.

Shirley Lowry, Reverend Lowry's widow.

So much influenced how I step into the role.

I'd say that I'm now more determined than ever to fight for what I believe to be right.

He became one of the peacemakers, very instrumental in helping the mayor, you know, bring about some kind of agreement between the parties.

We have succeeded, and the reverend got us there.

When the lunch counter was integrated...man.

We was overjoyed, man.

You all have waited for this a long time and have every right to celebrate.

I'm just happy that the play shares what the 40 of us felt and stood for in 1960.

It's about all of us who fought the good fight then, and dared to stand up against the system that was perpetuating all of this injustice against us.

I think we'll try something different.

Coming from Tampa and remembering the bad old days when Jim Crow was everywhere, I wanted to work through that myself and finally deal with something that had bothered me when I was ten years old, but that I hadn't understood in the least.

And as I was writing it over the months that I wrote it, I was feeling a personal satisfaction at finally coming to grips with my hometown and my childhood.

Congratulations.

What I think that folks in general can take away from when the righteous triumphed, someone paved the way.

Someone did it.

Here's the story that happened right in your town.

And it wasn't that long ago.

The other thing that I want us to take is a cautionary tale.

If we are not careful, we will repeat.

It's going to take everybody, everybody on the same team to make progress continue to happen.

There's still so much more to do.

So I'm not going to be daunted by the task.

I am going to continue the fight as long as there's breath in my body.

And I want these young people to know and understand and to be inspired to stand up and fight for what is right, good and just.

[music] Catch the premiere of Triumph, a WEDU documentary based on this story, on Thursday, December 4th at 9p.m.

or visit wedu.org/triump.