Greensboro sit-ins begin
On this day · 1 February 1960
Four students ordered coffee at a whites-only counter, refused to leave, and helped set the South alight.
On February 1, 1960, four Black freshmen from North Carolina A&T State University sat down at the whites-only lunch counter of the F.W. Woolworth’s store in Greensboro, North Carolina, and asked to be served. Ezell Blair Jr. (now Jibreel Khazan), Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, and David Richmond were refused. They stayed in their seats anyway.
They returned the next day, and the next, bringing more students each time. Within days the protest swelled to hundreds, drawing in students from neighboring colleges and a local high school.
They were not the first to stage a sit-in, but their quiet persistence struck a nerve.
The tactic spread across dozens of Southern cities within weeks, becoming a defining method of the civil rights movement. After months of pressure and lost sales, Woolworth’s desegregated its Greensboro counter that July.
Sources & references
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