South Carolina court to overturn conviction of "Friendship 9"

Fifty-four years ago, nine activists from Rock Hill, South Carolina, went to jail for their roles in a civil rights protest. On Wednesday morning, the eight surviving activists will leave the courthouse with clean records, just one more step in righting the wrongs of the past, CBS News' Michelle Miller reports.

These life-long friends were just teenagers back in 1961, students at Rock Hill's Friendship College. The civil rights movement was exploding around them as protesters across the South confronted segregation head on.

"We just got tired of being second-class citizens," Clarence Graham said. "We were often kicked, spit on, cursed out."

Graham and the men who'd become known as the "Friendship 9" spent months preparing to enlist in the movement.

"This was carefully orchestrated. No, no this was planned to the T," Graham said. "We had to because our lives were at stake."

On a cold January day, they walked up to the white's-only lunch counter at McCrory's, with the intention simply of sitting down -- a quiet act of defiance, met with violence.

"I didn't even get to sit down; as soon as I started to sit, I was snatched up, thrown on the floor and dragged out the back to the jailhouse," Graham said.

The sit-in strategy started at a North Carolina Woolworth counter in 1960 and brought much needed attention to the cause, but it was also bankrupting civil rights groups because bailing out protesters was expensive. So the "Friendship 9" chose an alternative: "Jail, no bail." Rather than pay a fine, they accepted a conviction of trespassing and were sentenced to hard labor.

"The NAACP, they couldn't afford it any longer; they had to find a method of getting something done without spending the money," Graham said.

They were the first students to go to jail, he said, and stay in jail.

"We served the time," W.T. "Dub" Massey said.

It was a hard 30 days in prison but nothing compared to carrying that conviction over the next 54 years.

"It was like dragging a chain behind you. You always had it back there in the memory, and any time you would fill out an application you always had to tell them and you wondered if it would affect if you got a position or not," David Williamson Jr. said.

"I think it was a badge of honor. It was," Massey said. "I think all of us realized that we had tapped onto something."

Three years ago, Rock Hill native Kimberly Johnson was writing a children's book when she was came across the story of the "Friendship 9."

"When I asked them what made you do it, they said they wanted freedom more," Johnson said. "And when we talk about freedom, it wasn't just going to McCrory's to sit down and eat. We are talking about the right to choose, the right to walk down the street without getting spit on. That's freedom, and that's what they wanted."

She convinced them that their next act toward freedom was erasing the record of their unjust conviction, so Johnson went to see Rock Hill Solicitor Kevin Brackett.

"These guys didn't do anything wrong," Brackett said.

Brackett will present their case in case in court, arguing their conviction would never stand today because it was based solely on the color of their skin.

"I'm giving them back what they are entitled to, which is, you know, their dignity and their ability to say 'I broke no laws,'" Brackett said.

Massey said the lesson in all this is perseverance.

"We have faith, and we knew that eventually all of this would come to fruition, and we would have to be exonerated," he said. "I knew that! Long time ago. Nobody asked."

The same lawyer who represented them in 1961 will stand beside them, and the judge who will clear their names is the nephew of the judge who originally convicted them.