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Today in History: The Greensboro Lunch Counter Sit-ins
02/01/10
On February 1, 1960, four African-American college students sat down at a whites-only lunch counter at a Woolworth’s store in Greensboro, North Carolina. Their peaceful protest was intended to challenge the segregation of private businesses in the South, which continued even after the U.S. Supreme Court had declared the segregation of public schools (in Brown v. Board of Education, 1954) and public transportation (in Boynton v. Virginia, 1960) to be illegal. The protesters returned day after day in ever-increasing numbers, patiently defying Woolworth’s segregation policy and refusing to respond to taunts and harassment from angry whites.
As the Greensboro Lunch-Counter Sit-in received coverage on national television news programs, similar peaceful protest actions were carried out across the South and supportive boycotts of segregationist retailers unfolded in the North. Eventually, the sit-in movement took such a financial toll on Woolworth’s and other targeted retailers that the chains gave in and integrated lunch counters throughout the South. The successful protests also led to the creation of an important new civil rights organization based on college campuses, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Civil rights activist Ella Baker described the impact of the sit-in movement and the founding of the SNCC in her famous article Bigger Than a Hamburger.