Greensboro, North Carolina, Lunch Counters Integrated
Six months after the historic sit-ins on February 1, 1960, the lunch counters and other public accommodations in Greensboro, North Carolina, were racially integrated on this day.
The Greensboro sit-ins were a major turning point in the history of the civil rights movement and in American history, introducing a new level of massive direct action and inspiring similar sit-ins across the South.
The Woolworth’s store, where the famous sit-in occurred in Greensboro, is now a museum (see below).
In truth, there had been a number of sit-ins in the 1940s and 1950s, but none ever inspired a national movement. See the sit-ins on April 17, 1943; May 8, 1943; January 20, 1955; July 19, 1958; and August 19, 1958
Visit the International Civil Rights Center and Museum, site of the original sit-ins: http://www.sitinmovement.org
Learn more about SNCC: Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s (1981)
Learn more, read original documents from the sit-in movement: http://www.crmvet.org/info/sithome.htm
Read: Iwan Morgan and Philip Davies, From Sit-Ins to SNCC: The Student Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s (2010)
Learn more about the historic Greensboro sit-in at the SNCC Digital Gateway here
Visit the National Museum of African American History and Culture here