In 1960, three years after the Little Rock Nine opened up Arkansas' schools to black students, another major civil rights action took place in Greensboro, North Carolina. Throughout the South, restaurants were divided into black and white service areas, and many didn't serve black customers at all.
On February 1, 1960, four black college students decided to take a stand against those policies. Their goal was to visit a local segregated restaurant and start a nonviolent protest, and it was a wild success.
This image shows the Woolworth's store in downtown Greensboro where four college students (Jibreel Khazan, Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, and David Richmond) decided to stage a protest in 1960. At the time, the store was a general store with a lunch counter that only served white customers. The four boys sat at the lunch counter anyway, and when the server told them to leave, they refused. Read the information in this table to learn more about their actions.
| Four Students Make a Stand | The four boys said they wouldn't leave until they were served, and they stayed in their seats at the lunch counter until the store closed. They were practicing a sit-in, a type of protest that involves sitting in one spot and peacefully disrupting everyday operations. The next day, the same boys showed up again, and twenty more students joined them. |
| Protests Spread | As you can see from the picture above, sitting in one spot for hours wasn't always easy. Employees and hecklers frequently insulted, hit, and poured drinks and food on the protesters' heads. But the media attention was intense, and every day more and more people, both black and white, joined the original protesters and spread sit-ins to other restaurants. Eventually hundreds of people were clogging sidewalks and stores. |
| Businesses Cave In | The Greensboro Sit-In movement, the collective peaceful protests and sit-ins throughout Greensboro in 1960, lasted for six months. After all those months of reduced revenue, businesses caved to the pressure and began serving black customers alongside white ones. The black employees of the Woolworth where the protests began were served their first meal at the lunch counter on July 25. |
To review the Greensboro sit-ins, drag the following events into the correct chronological order:
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Black employees of Woolworth are served lunch. Greensboro's business leaders cave in to the pressure. Four college students visit the Greensboro Woolworth and ask for lunch. The Greensboro sit-ins acquire intense media attention. Dozens of students gather to sit at Woolworth's lunch counters.
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