Willie 'Dub' Massey

Massey died on Tuesday 10 November 2026, aged 84, his family said. No cause of death was made public, and Robinson Funeral Home in Rock Hill said funeral arrangements were not yet complete as of 11 November.

His death left David Williamson Jr. as the last surviving member of the Friendship Nine. Williamson said of his cousin: "He was the hero, not me." Rock Hill mayor John Gettys called him a friend and an essential part of the city's story; state representative John King said men like Massey helped make it possible for people like him to have a seat at the table; and Kevin Brackett said Massey "never stood so tall as he did when he sat down at that lunch counter."

Willie T. Massey, known all his life as Dub, was a Rock Hill, South Carolina native. As a young man he attended Friendship Junior College, a historically Black college in Rock Hill, where he joined fellow students in the city's student protest movement against segregation. He was a first cousin of David Williamson Jr., who sat beside him in the 1961 protest.

On 31 January 1961, Massey was one of nine young men who sat at the whites only lunch counter at McCrory's Five and Dime on Main Street in Rock Hill. The others were David Williamson Jr., Thomas Gaither, John Gaines, Mack Workman, Willie McLeod, Robert McCullough, Clarence Graham and James Wells. They were arrested, convicted of trespassing and breach of the peace, and given a choice of a 100 dollar fine or 30 days of hard labour. They chose the jail term and spent from 31 January to early March 1961 on the York County prison farm. The "jail, no bail" tactic, adopted so that civil rights groups would not have to fund fines, drew national press attention and helped re-energise protests across the South. Asked why he was at the counter, Massey answered: "Man, I'm going to jail." He continued to protest after his release.

Massey went on to graduate from Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte and from Winthrop University. He worked for decades as a teacher and school counsellor in York County, was a preacher at many area churches and pastor of Great Joy Baptist Church in McConnells, and served as a York County magistrate judge and as a social worker. In 2011 he served on the steering committee for the 50th anniversary of the protest.

On 28 January 2015 a Rock Hill court vacated the convictions of the Friendship Nine, and solicitor Kevin Brackett apologised to the men on behalf of South Carolina. Massey told The Herald: "I went with these men, and they changed my life. And we changed the world, together."

Massey lived his whole life in and close to Rock Hill. He was married to Joyce Massey, and they had two children, Jennifer and William, and four grandchildren. Friends remembered him as a man of short stature, around five feet five inches tall, with a powerful voice and a deep care for the students he taught and counselled.

The Friendship Nine were among the first civil rights protesters of the sit in era to serve jail time rather than accept bail, and their example shaped the jail, no bail strategy later used across the South. The site of the old McCrory's on Main Street now houses a restaurant whose counter stools carry the names of the nine, together with a display telling their story. Massey's decades of talks in schools, churches and civic groups did much to keep that history alive in the city where it happened.