The International Civil Rights Center and Museum in downtown Greensboro got a special guest on Thursday, July 25. Nationally known civil rights advocate Al Sharpton – a good friend of the museum’s co-founder Skip Alston, who’s also the chairman of the Guilford County Board of Commissioners – was in Greensboro for an event at the Koury Convention Center, and, when Sharpton said he wanted to check out the museum, Alston was all ears and very accommodating.

The two men, who are both well known for their efforts over the years in the long struggle for civil rights for black Americans, have been friends for over three decades, and Sharpton has been honored by the city’s civil rights museum in the past and been the recipient of museum awards for his efforts in that fight.

On Thursday, Sharpton was in town to deliver the keynote speech at the 2024 AME Zion National Conference, but before that, he made time to see the museum.

Alston said he and Sharpton met at an NAACP convention in 1989.

“I believe it was in Baltimore,” Alston said this week right after Sharpton’s visit.

In the 1990s, Alston became head of the North Carolina NAACP and, in that capacity, he often worked with Sharpton on various initiatives and the two became close friends over the years.

When Alston stepped down as the head of the state’s NAACP, Sharpton asked Alston to serve on a board for a national civil rights organization, an offer Alston happily accepted.

About two decades ago, when Sharpton was in Greensboro for another event, Alston invited Sharpton to a Guilford County Board of Commissioners meeting and Sharpton did drop by the Old Guilford County Court House to say a few words at the podium in the commissioners’ second-floor meeting room.

This week, Sharpton got the royal treatment and a personal tour of the museum, just as Vice President Kamala Harris – now a presidential candidate – did in 2021.

Three years ago, Harris was speaking in Greensboro and she decided to make time to visit the museum after Alston convinced her to change her plans.

That was a pretty stark contrast to what happened in 2016 when then presidential candidate Donald Trump requested to visit the facility and make a speech there.

That visit never happened.

There are varying accounts as to what prevented Trump’s appearance at the museum and you will get a different story depending on whether you ask museum officials or Trump’s advance staff at the time.

The Civil Rights Center and Museum denied Trump the visit and museum officials stated publicly Trump’s staff was “aggressive and rude” to museum staff and also said that Trump made unreasonable “special requests” such as a need for the museum to close to the public for at least five hours.

One reliable source said the Trump campaign offered the museum $10,000 at that time for the use of the facility, however, the museum still didn’t want the then Republican presidential nominee to visit and make a speech from the site.

Regardless of what exactly happened nearly a decade ago with the former president and current presidential candidate, the museum certainly rolled out the red carpet for Sharpton this week.

Though Sharpton had seen the museum before, he’d never been on a tour of it, and, this week while in town, the civil rights leader and television personality, along with his two daughters, got to see the museum and the attractions inside.

He was even allowed to sit at the famous lunch counter where the 1960 national Sit-in Movement began after four black North Carolina A&T University students took a seat at the whites-only counter and refused to move.

“We don’t usually let people sit in the lunch counter seats, but since he has been honored by the museum, we made an exception,” said Alston, who with the help of a museum guide, gave Sharpton and his daughters a private tour of the museum that day.

Another famous person who’s sat at the lunch counter is Vice President Kamala Harris, who got to sit in the seat while she was visiting Greensboro in early 2021.

There’s a highly publicized picture of Harris, wearing a pandemic mask, sitting at the lunch counter during that visit.

Civil rights maverick Rosa Parks also got to sit in a seat at the counter when she visited the museum. That was actually years before it opened.

At the museum, there’s a replica of the bus seat Parks was sitting on when she famously refused to move to the back of the bus to make room for white people.