S.C. judge tosses sit-in convictions for Friendship Nine

Lunch-counter protests had become the cause célèbre the year before, in 1960, just two hours up the road in Greensboro, North Carolina. African-Americans, many of them students, sought to break the barrier of segregated lunch counters by sitting in “white-only” sections.

On Wednesday, the attorney who represented the men almost 5½ decades ago returned to court to have their names cleared. In a poetic twist, Circuit Court Judge John C. Hayes III, who presided over the hearing, is the nephew of the judge who originally sentenced these largely unsung civil rights heroes.

CNN