It is, we realize, becoming increasingly hard to remember the odious days of legal segregation in the South.

True, many folks, black and white, in their 60s and beyond can recall growing up in and enduring those times. Black men and women, of course, endured the most egregious impact of those laws, but the culture of segregation hollowed out whites in a way that diminished them even as the law of the land tried to elevate them at the expense of their fellow human beings.

But a generation and more has come along that never knew anything other than a land covered by the momentous civil rights amendments ushered in by Lyndon Johnson in the aftermath of John F. Kennedy's November 1963 assassination. For many young African American young men and women today, life may hold its injustices and hurdles, real and perceived, but it has never held water fountains labeled "white" or "colored," or routine lynchings and beatings overlooked if not sanctioned by the white power structure.

That is why events such as this past Sunday's unveiling of a historical marker commemorating what backers have successfully contended was the first use of the sit-in tactic to protest segregation.

Here's what the marker says:

"Segregation protest at an ice cream parlor on this site, June 23, 1957, led to court case testing dual racial facilities."

The marker was hard won. R. Kelly Bryant spearheaded effort, eventually winning over the state to the appropriateness of that marker. While the sit-in, an isolated event on a hot summer afternoon, was apparently the first such sit-in to protest segregated dining facilities, it was overshadowed two years later. That's when college students launched sustained lunch-counter sit-ins in Greensboro that did much to fuel the civil rights movement.

The brave move by a half-dozen young Durhamites that day was part of a growing tide of organized resistance to the region's Jim Crow laws. To some speakers at Sunday's dedication, it was important to remind a younger generation of the prejudice that prevailed in that period, and the courage of those like the Royal Ice Cream protestors who set out to finally topple legal segregation.

Said the Rev. Kenneth Hammond, pastor to Union Baptist Church that owns the land on which the ice cream parlor stood:

"We thank you for those upon whose shoulders we are able to stand and continue the fight for equality, liberty and justice."

It was a noble fight, a fight that arguably rescued the South from the economic stagnation brought on in part by segregation. And the new marker is a long overdue commemoration of the events that began to unfold at the Royal Ice Cream shop.