Major Sit-in Victory: Four Chain Stores Desegregate 150 Lunch Counters in 112 Cities
In response to the sit-ins that began on February 1, 1960, several chain stores announced on this day that they would desegregate their lunch counters in North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee and seven other southern states.
This decision was arguably the greatest one day victory for the sit-in movement.
Other sit-in victories occurred in Nashville (May 10, 1960), Greensboro, North Carolina (the site of the first sit-in in February) (July 25, 1960), and Atlanta (March 7, 1961).
Photos and documents about the sit-ins at the University of North Carolina Library:
http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/exhibits/protests/sitins.htmlRead about SNCC: Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s (1981)
Learn more: Iwan W. Morgan and Philip Davies, From Sit-ins to SNCC: The Student Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s (2012)
Watch an interview with one of the participants in the original February 1, 1960 sit-in: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zU2lfkz5-MU
Visit the National Museum of African American History and Culture here