Student Activism

REQUIRED READING

Ezell Blair Jr., Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, and David Richmond, now known as the “Greensboro Four,” were all students at North Carolina A&T (Agricultural and Technical) College, a Black college in Greensboro. They were teenagers, barely out of high school. But on that Monday afternoon, Feb. 1, 1960, they started a movement that changed America.

Six years after the landmark Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, the civil rights movement seemed to have stalled. In Brown, the Court had ruled that “separate but equal” facilities were unconstitutional, making segregation in public schools illegal. But some states virtually ignored the ruling, especially in the South where “Jim Crow” laws and customs often prevailed, and public facilities like hospitals and parks remained segregated, with water fountains and restrooms often designated “White” or “Colored.” In many places, Black diners could not eat in the same restaurants as whites.

“There was growing impatience within the Black community over the absence of any significant progress on desegregation after Brown, both in Greensboro and throughout the country,” says Chafe. “It was like pent-up pressure ready to burst at the appropriate moment—and February 1st provided that moment.” But the four A&T students didn’t go to Woolworth’s on a whim. The Greensboro sit-in wasn’t a random act of rebellion, but the result of months of planning. The students had received guidance from mentor activists and collaborated with students from Greensboro's all-women's Bennett College.

Before heading to Woolworth’s, the students rehearsed how they would act and what they would say. When they sat down at the lunch counter, they fully expected to be arrested—or worse. “I felt that this could be the last day of my life” recalls Franklin McCain, now 67. “But I thought that it was well worth it. Because to continue to live the way we had been living—I questioned that. It’s an incomplete life. I’d made up my mind that we absolutely had no choice.” The Greensboro Four, as they became known, had also been spurred to action by the brutal murder in 1955 of a young Black boy, Emmett Till, who had allegedly whistled at a white woman in a Mississippi store.

Blair, Richmond, McCain and McNeil planned their protest carefully, and enlisted the help of a local white businessman, Ralph Johns, to put their plan into action.

On February 1, 1960, the four students sat down at the lunch counter at the Woolworth’s in downtown Greensboro, where the official policy was to refuse service to anyone but whites. Denied service, the four young men refused to give up their seats.

While lunch counter sit-ins had taken place before, the four young men from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University drew national attention to the cause. By simply remaining in their seats peacefully and quietly, they flummoxed the staff and left them unsure on how to enforce their “whites-only” rule. Eventually the manager closed the store early and the men left—with the rest of the customers. It was a small victory—and one that would build. The Greensboro Four’s efforts inspired a sit-in movement that eventually spread to 55 cities in 13 states. Not only were lunch counters across the country integrated one by one, a student movement was galvanized.

By February 5, some 300 students had joined the protest at Woolworth’s, paralyzing the lunch counter and other local businesses. Heavy television coverage of the Greensboro sit-ins sparked a sit-in movement that quickly spread to college towns throughout the South and into the North, as young Black and white people joined in various forms of peaceful protest against segregation in libraries, beaches, hotels and other establishments. The sit-ins not only attracted new protesters, they also drew counter-protesters who showed up to harass, insult and assault them. But the acts of intimidation didn’t stop the movement from building. After nearly a week of protests, approximately 1,400 students showed up to the Greensboro Woolworth to demonstrate. 

Another critical part of the protest was looping in the media. Multiple lunch counter sit-ins had taken place in the Midwest, East Coast and South in the 1940s and 1950s, but these demonstrations didn’t garner national attention. The Greensboro Four wanted their protest to get recognition, so before heading to Woolworth’s on February 1, they arranged for Ralph Johns, a white businessman and activist, to alert the press about their plans. “This is the real beginnings of TV media; people can see the sit-in and imagine how they would do it themselves,” said Theoharis, author of The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks.

In response to the success of the sit-in movement, dining facilities across the South were being integrated by the summer of 1960. At the end of July, when many local college students were on summer vacation, the Greensboro Woolworth’s quietly integrated its lunch counter. Four Black Woolworth’s employees—Geneva Tisdale, Susie Morrison, Anetha Jones and Charles Best—were the first to be served.

The Greensboro Sit-In was a critical turning point in Black history and American history, bringing the fight for civil rights to the national stage. Its use of nonviolence inspired the Freedom Riders and others to take up the cause of integration in the South, furthering the cause of equal rights in the United States.

QUESTIONS

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