Greensboro Four
By: Cameron Bunch
The Greensboro Four
On February 1st, 1960, at 4:30 PM four black students from the NC A&T University sat down at the lunch counter inside the Woolworth store in Greensboro, North Carolina. The men were refused service at the segregated lunch counter, and the manager asked them to leave. The four freshman stayed until the store closed. The next day, more than twenty black students who had been recruited from other campus groups came to the store to join the sit-in. White customers heckled the black students, who read books and studied to keep busy. The lunch counter staff continued to refuse service.
Impact
Despite sometimes violent reaction to sit-ins, these demonstrations eventually led to positive results. The sit-ins received significant media and government attention. In many towns, the sit-ins were successful in achieving the desegregation of lunch counters and other public places. The media picked up this issue and covered it nationwide, beginning with lunch counters and spreading to other forms of public accommodation, including transport facilities, art galleries, beaches, parks, swimming pools, libraries, and even museums around the South.
Greensboro Sit-ins
The Greensboro Sit-ins were a series of nonviolent protests in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1960. This led to the Woolworth department store chain removing its policy of racial segregation in the Southern United States.
David Richmond
David Leinall Richmond (April 20, 1941- December 7, 1990)
Franklin McCain
Franklin Eugene McCain (January 3, 1941- January 9, 2014)
Ezell Blair Jr.
Jibreel Khazan (born Ezell Alexander Blair Jr., October 18, 1941)