Greensboro Woolworth Lunch Counter Sit Ins ended today 25 July 1960 [View all]

Last edited Fri Jul 25, 2025, 12:42 PM - Edit history (1)

EDITED TO ADD Cross posting to World History Group as well



I will be adding more articles today as I can research them


https://www.history.com/articles/the-greensboro-sit-in

https://americanhistory.si.edu/brown/history/6-legacy/freedom-struggle-2.html

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greensboro_sit-ins


https://northcarolinahistory.org/encyclopedia/greensboro-sit-in/

snip-"On February 1, 1960, four African-American students of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University sat at a white-only lunch counter inside a Greensboro, North Carolina, Woolworth’s store. While sit-ins had been held elsewhere in the United States, the Greensboro sit-in catalyzed a wave of nonviolent protest against private-sector segregation in the United States.

The first Greensboro sit-in was not spontaneous. The four students who staged the protest, all of them male freshmen, had read about nonviolent protest, and one of them, Ezell Blair, had seen a documentary on the life of Mohandas Gandhi. Another of the four, Joseph McNeil, worked part-time in the university library with Eula Hudgens, an alumna of the school who had participated in freedom rides; McNeil and Hudgens regularly discussed nonviolent protest. All four of the students befriended white businessman, philanthropist, and social activist Ralph Johns, a benefactor of both the NAACP and North Carolina Agricultural and Technical.

The first sit-in was meticulously planned and executed. While all four students had considered different means of nonviolent protest, McNeil suggested the tactic of the sit-in to the other three. To him, discipline in executing the protest was paramount. Months before the sit-in, he attended a concert at which other African-American students behaved tactlessly, leaving him determined not to repeat their error. The plan for the protest was simple. The students would first stop at Ralph Johns’ store so that Johns could contact a newspaper reporter. They would then go to the Woolworth’s five-and-dime store to purchase items, saving their receipts. After finishing their shopping, they would sit down at the lunch counter and courteously request service, and they would wait until service was provided.https://northcarolinahistory.org/encyclopedia/greensboro-sit-in/."


snip-"The next morning twenty-nine neatly dressed male and female North Carolina Agricultural and Technical students sat at the Woolworth’s lunch counter. The protest grew the following day, and on Thursday, white students from a nearby women’s college took part in the protests, which expanded to other stores. Soon crowds of students were mobbing local lunch counters. As the protests grew, opposition grew vociferous. Crowds of white men began appearing at lunch counters to harass the protesters, often by spitting, uttering abusive language, and throwing eggs. In one case, a protester’s coat was set on fire, and the assailant was arrested."


much more there









edit2- https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/courage-at-the-greensboro-lunch-counter-4507661/



snip-"
"On February 1, 1960, four young African-American men, freshmen at the Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina, entered the Greensboro Woolworth’s and sat down on stools that had, until that moment, been occupied exclusively by white customers. The four—Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair Jr., Joseph McNeil and David Richmond—asked to be served, and were refused. But they did not get up and leave. Indeed, they launched a protest that lasted six months and helped change America. A section of that historic counter is now held by the National Museum of American History, where the chairman of the division of politics and reform, Harry Rubenstein, calls it “a significant part of a larger collection about participation in our political system.” The story behind it is central to the epic struggle of the civil rights movement.."


Much more there.


https://www.c-span.org/classroom/document/?1886#:~:text=February%201%2C%201960,hear%20from%20eyewitnesses%20who%20participated.