Greensboro, NC Sit-In — Civil Rights Struggle Enters Historic New Phase
A sit-in at a segregated lunch counter at Woolworth’s Department Store in Greensboro, North Carolina, on this day sparked similar sit-ins across the South and brought a new level of direct action to the civil rights movement. The four students from North Carolina A&T University were Ezell Blair, Jr.; Joseph McNeil; David Richmond; and Franklin McCain.
The sit-in won a victory six months later on July 25, 1960 when public facilities in Greensboro were desegregated.
Contrary to popular belief, this was not the first sit-in. The earlier sit-ins, however, did not spark a national movement, as this one did. The sit-ins on this day, in a broader sense launched a new and more militant phase of the Civil Rights Movement.
The earlier sit-ins occurred on April 17, 1943; May 8, 1943; January 20, 1955; July 19, 1958; and August 19, 1958. The original Woolworth’s building in Greensboro is now the International Civil Rights Center and Museum.
The Greensboro sit-in on this day sparked a wave of similar sit-ins across the south. See the first sit-in in Alabama on February 25, 1960. Leaders of the local sit-ins met in Raleigh, North Carolina, and on April 15, 1960 formed the Student Non-Violent Coordination Committee (SNCC, and always pronounced “Snick”), which went on to become the most assertive civil rights group in the south.
At the famous 1963 March on Washington, SNCC leader John Lewis was invited to address the crowd. Because his planned speech included criticisms of the Kennedy administration for failing to aggressively support civil rights, march leader organizers required him to remove his more inflammatory remarks. Read about the incident here. Lewis went on to have a long and distinguished career as a member of the House of Representatives from 1987 until his death on July 17, 2020.
Visit International Civil Rights Center and Museum, Greensboro, NC: http://www.sitinmovement.org/
View early sit-ins: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xbbcjn4d1cE
Read: Dick Cluster, ed., They Should Have Served That Cup of Coffee (1979)
Learn more: Iwan W. Morgan and Philip Davies, From Sit-ins to SNCC: The Student Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s (2012)
Learn more about SNCC: Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s (1981)
Read an original 1960 listing of the first sit-ins, 2/1/60 – 3/31/60: http://www.crmvet.org/docs/6004_sitin-list.pdf
Learn About the Southern Civil Rights Movement – Photos and Documents: http://crmvet.org/