How a simple act of grass-roots disobedience galvanized the civil rights movement and changed the social landscape of the American South
How it Began
On Feb. 1, 1960, at around 4:30 p.m., four black students from North Carolina A&T University — from left, David Richmond, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair Jr. and Joseph McNeil — entered a Woolworth's in Greensboro, N.C., and, after purchasing merchandise from several counters in the store, sat down at the store's "whites only" lunch counter and ordered some coffee.Jack Moebes / Corbis
The Civil Rights Act
Among the provisions of the landmark legislation signed into law by President Lyndon Baines Johnson on July 2, 1964, were clauses that allowed the Federal Government to enforce desegregation and prohibited discrimination in public facilities, in government and in employment, thereby abolishing the notorious Jim Crow laws of the South. Among the many dignitaries invited to the signing was Martin Luther King Jr., above.Hulton / Getty
The Four Original Protesters
In 1980, the original four North Carolina A&T students returned to Greensboro for a ceremony, above, marking the 20th anniversary of their act of civil disobedience. Joseph McNeill, far left, went on to serve in the U.S. Air Force, attaining the rank of captain; David Richmond, second from left, became a counselor-coordinator for the Comprehensive Employment Training Act program in Greensboro before passing away in 1990; Franklin McCain, second from right, worked as a chemist for the Celanese Corporation; and Ezell Blair Jr., far right, who now goes by the name Jibreel Khazan, attended law school at Howard University and currently works with developmentally disabled people in New Bedford, Mass.Bob Jordan / AP
The Woolworth’s Today
Closed in 1993, the site of the first sit-in was threatened with destruction until local leaders proposed buying the site and turning it into a museum devoted to the civil rights movement. Their efforts climaxed on Feb. 1, 2010 — the 50th anniversary of the four students' initial act of civil disobedience — when the International Civil Rights Center & Museum had its official grand opening. In addition to preserving the lunch counter where the four young men sat, the museum will serve as an archival center, collecting museum and teaching facility devoted to the international struggle for civil and human rights.International Civil Rights Center & Museum
At the Counter
The four young men were refused service and asked to leave. Instead, they remained in their seats until the store closed, sometime around 5:00. All told, they spent a little more than 30 minutes in the store that first day.Jack Moebes / Corbis
Gathering Steam
The next day, the four young men returned to the store, along with approximately two dozen more students from the college. They sat from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and were once again refused service. As they sat, they kept themselves busy with books and study materials. Several white patrons heckled them. But their actions drew local media attention and thus attracted even more students to their cause. By the time this photo was taken on Feb. 6, the lunch-counter protest had lured several hundred people to the store.Bettmann / Corbis
Things Get Ugly
As the protest gathered momentum, long-simmering tensions came to a boil. On Feb. 6, a caller warned that a bomb had been set inside the Greensboro Woolworth's; the store was emptied and the business closed. The crowd moved to another five-and-dime store, which also was immediately closed. When the two stores reopened later in the month, the protests resumed and tensions flared once again. In this photo, a young white man who had joined the black students in sympathy is dragged from the counter and beaten by other white youths.Bettmann / Corbis
The Movement Spreads
In July 1960, the Woolworth's in Greensboro would desegregate its lunch counter, but by that time, the actions of the four students had inspired many others to challenge the lunch-counter segregation policies in their cities. In this photo, the manager of a dining room in Atlanta's Trailways bus terminal asks a group of protesters to leave the establishment's lunch counter. When the demonstrators refused, they were arrested by the officer standing behind them.AP
Segregation in Practice
Though the four North Carolina A&T students were not the first to sit at a segregated lunch counter — history records sit-ins taking place in Chicago in 1942 and St. Louis, Mo., in 1949 — their actions came at a time when the civil rights movement had gained wide momentum. By the fall of 1960, sit-ins had occurred in more than 80 cities across the South. At the Kresge's store in Petersburg, Va., above, protesters who have been refused service stand and wait to be seated nevertheless. Shortly after this photograph was taken, the store desegregated its lunch counter.Howard Sochurek / Time Life Pictures / Getty
Firing Line
The ranks of the protesters were filled with college and high school students. To prepare themselves for the abuses they feared they might face while sitting at hostile lunch counters, these protesters participated in an extracurricular course, in which they endured smoke blowing, hair pulling, coffee spilling and shouts of racist epithets. Anyone who lost his or her temper failed the course.Howard Sochurek / Time Life Pictures / Getty
The SNCC
Galvanized by their success, many of the young people who participated in the sit-ins coalesced to form a locally based, student-run civil rights organization that they named the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Focused on nonviolent direct-action tactics, the SNCC would play a key role in the 1961 Freedom Rides, the voter-registration drive in McComb, Miss., and the Albany Movement, a desegregation campaign organized in Albany, Ga.Danny Lyon / Magnum
The Sit-ins and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
In his writings, Martin Luther King Jr. hailed the sit-ins as an "electrifying movement" that "shattered the placid surface of campuses and communities across the South." In the fall of 1960, some of the student leaders, including Julian Bond (fourth from right), one of the founders of the SNCC, persuaded King to join them at a sit-in organized at Rich's, an Atlanta department store. The action resulted in the arrests of King and approximately 300 students.Civil Rights activist Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. talking w. a college group of male & female student sit-in organizers incl. Julian Bond (4R), during a strategy meeting in his office in an attempt to end the city's lunch counter segregration.regation
