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International Civil Rights Center & Museum

Despite some hard-fought gains in the fight for equality, racial segregation was still firmly entrenched in nearly every segment of society of 1960 America. American blacks were still being treated as second-class citizens. Spurred by the Montgomery bus boycott (1955-1956) and passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957, blacks were more determined than ever to be outspoken in their demands.

In early 1960 a lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina became the scene of a civil rights action with results that eminent historians William S. Powell and William H. Chafe compared to the Boston Tea Party of 1773. Both were events that sparked a revolutionary drive for equality, initiated direct action instead of passive resistance, and brought organization and a brotherhood of commitment to the cause of relieving oppression.

On the afternoon of February 1, 1960, Ezell Blair, Jr., David Richmond, Joseph McNeil, and Franklin McCain, all freshmen at nearby Greensboro Agricultural and Technical College, entered the F. W. Woolworth store on South Elm Street. After purchasing some personal items they proceeded past the stand up/take out only end of the store’s lunch counter that was assigned to "coloreds”. They took seats on counter stools in the all-white section.

The four requested service but knew that it would not be forthcoming. In fact, the four expected to be arrested, as had other protesters in similar incidents in Baltimore, Wichita, Oklahoma City, and Durham. Bail money was already in place for that eventuality. There was no confrontation, but also no service.

The four A&T students did not achieve their goal of being served at the lunch counter that day in February, but they had launched a movement far greater than the personalities involved. Though they remained active and were considered campus heroes, their role in history was fulfilled that Monday afternoon when they walked out of the Woolworth store. A historic movement was underway, and the persons who initiated it, and for whatever reasons, were no longer the focus of attention.

In most ways, the incident at the Woolworth store started out as simply another black protest against racial discrimination and segregation, but along the way, it changed direction, introduced new concepts and techniques, and transformed an isolated episode into a catalyst for radical social reform. The event was not a spontaneous action but the result of two decades of hope and frustration and more than a month of intense discussion and careful planning; yet, very few that February day anticipated any consequences beyond the local level.

C.L. Harris's afternoon routine was abruptly interrupted shortly before 4:30 on the afternoon of February 1, 1960. One of Harris's employees rushed into the store manager's office in the downtown Greensboro Woolworth store to alert Harris to the fact that four young black men were sitting in the white section of the store's lunch counter and refused to move. Harris's response was to do nothing, just let them sit.

In the week's prior, Harris had suspected that something like this might happen and had consulted with Woolworth's regional office in Atlanta regarding an official company policy. In those conversations, Harris recommended that no action be taken. The company agreed, because they did not want the negative publicity that had accompanied police involvement in other civil rights protests.

When no police arrived the students were unsure of what to do. Still sitting at the lunch counter when the store closed Ezzell Blair located a telephone and called Ralph Johns, "Number One, this is Number Three. They've closed the doors. What should we do?" Johns instructed the four to remain sitting. Johns had already made an anonymous phone call to Jo Spivey, a reporter for the Greensboro Record telling her she should investigate an occurrence at the Woolworth's store. Spivey recognized the caller's voice and thinking it was just another effort on John's part to draw attention, did not venture downtown.

She did however; call the newspaper office to dispatch a photographer to the scene. Photographer Jack Moebes arrived just as the Wooworth's doors closed and a small crowd was forming. Still determined to keep the incident under wraps C.L. Harris would not permit any photographs to be taken. Fifteen minutes later the students left by a side entrance and Moebes was able to take a few photos for posterity.

News of the sit-in traveled quickly throughout the A&T campus. Blair, McNeil, McCain, and Richmond became heroes to the other students, and there was a groundswell of support and volunteers willing to join the cause. On February 2, 31 students from the college arrived at 10:00 a.m. to take seats at the Woolworth restaurant. All were neatly dressed, the men in coats and ties and the women in dresses, and all had brought school materials to study. There was no confrontation, but also no service.

The big difference between the first and second day was the extent of media coverage. On Tuesday, reporters from both local papers, a UPI representative, a bevy of photographers, and even television cameramen were present. C.L. Harris tried desperately but unsuccessfully to prevent picture of the protest. Reporters managed to interview several of the students, and one enthusiastic youth replied, "We are prepared to keep on coming for two years if we have to."

Harris skillfully dodged persistent questions, issuing only one statement all day: "They can just sit there. It's nothing to me."

The students left at 12:30 promising to return that day. That afternoon, February 2, the Record published the first account of the sit-in, a one column story with photographs. The next morning, the more conservative Daily News took an angle more appealing to its white readers. The incident was relegated to the middle of the "local" section and indicated that the dean of men at A&T was looking into the possibility of misbehavior of students at the Woolworth store. In fact, Dean William H. Gamble had earlier stated that there was nothing he could or would do as long as the students broke no laws, a tacit approval of the action of the students and their nonviolent technique.

By Wednesday, February 3, the protest was no longer confined to the students at A&T before lunchtime women from Bennett College and, for the first time, blacks who were not students arrived to take part. A few whites joined the demonstration, but more came to heckle and taunt the demonstrators. So many joined the protesters that the movement spread to the S. H. Kress lunch counter less than one half block away. As more blacks arrived, so did more whites, mostly young, to try and counter the sit-in efforts. Over the next two days the numbers continued to grow and racial tensions mounted. Fortunately, cool heads prevailed on both sides; negotiations were entered; and violence temporarily avoided.

Interestingly, the lunch counter at the Woolworth's store in Greensboro, where the sit-ins catapulted the movement throughout the South, did not serve a single black until July 25, 1960, several months after others had submitted to the pressures of the sit-in technique and integrated their dining facilities.

Media coverage expanded with the size of the protest in Greensboro. From no coverage on the first day, newspapers across the state began to pick up the story by the end of the week. Five major state newspapers ran front page coverage while the country at large learned of the events through the New York Times and other national publications.

The response by blacks, mostly students, was massive and swift. Within two weeks similar sit-ins had occurred in Winston-Salem, Durham, Charlotte, Fayetteville, Raleigh, Elizabeth City, High Point, Hampton (Virginia), and Chattanooga (Tennessee). By mid-March, the protest had spread to Concord and Salisbury, North Carolina; Richmond, Virginia; Nashville, Tennessee; Rock Hill, South Carolina; Tallahassee, Florida; and Montgomery, Alabama. The summer of 1960 saw thirty-three southern cities with integrated eating facilities; a year later, 126 cities had accepted the new order.

The four A&T students did not achieve their goal of being served at the lunch counter that February 1, but they had launched a movement far greater than the personalities involved. Though they remained active and were considered campus heroes, their role in history was fulfilled that Monday afternoon when they walked out of the Woolworth store. A historic movement was underway, and the persons who initiated it, and for whatever reasons, were no longer the focus of attention.

Perhaps the single greatest achievement of the Greensboro sit-ins, one which distinguished them from all previous efforts at protest, was the difference in the message they carried. Anger and dissatisfaction over the indifference of white society was expressed in a manner that whites could not ignore. Black commitment would not allow it simply to go away and whites, for the first time, could not turn the conventional deaf ear. As the sit-in technique spread, media coverage broadened and white communities were forced to confront the segregation issue.

No longer could individual protest sites be treated as isolated incidents or the work of a few agitators. Black Americans, led by the younger generation, no longer accepted the old ways, and instead of passively requesting their rights as citizens of the United States, they now aggressively, but non-violently, demanded them. The message was clear: The Greensboro sit-ins and the events they spawned had changed forever the form of communications between white and black Americans.

It was no small irony that a management policy adopted with the hope of discouraging integration of lunch counters helped to create the very techniques that were to bring success to the efforts. By not having the four arrested for trespassing, store manager Harris not only lost the opportunity to confine the protest to a local incident (which had been the case with most previous attempts), he inadvertently contributed to the effectiveness of the "sit-in," which, along with its offshoots (wade-ins, walk-ins, read-ins, kneel-ins ) would eventually crumble the barriers of segregation and bring to an end the long life of Jim Crow.

In addition to inciting the breakdown of racial barriers in hundreds of public facilities throughout the South, the action at the Woolworth store in Greensboro gave impetus to other events that proved to be milestones in the civil rights movement. Shortly afterwards, in April of 1960, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was formed at Shaw University in Raleigh; Freedom Rides began in the Deep South (1961); Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., based largely on the success of the sit-ins, decided to take his Southern Christian Leadership Conference into a more active political role that resulted in the massive march on Washington (1963) and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

As much as anything, the Greensboro sit-ins represented the determination of younger blacks to accelerate the pace of change. The slowness of the court system and the often vague decisions rendered were no longer tolerable. Equally as important, the sit-ins illustrated that blacks had decided to set their own agendas instead of submitting to moderate white views of what should constitute civil rights objectives.