Greensboro Lunch Counter, 1960

Object Details

Description: On February 1, 1960, four African American students at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College began a nonviolent, direct-action protest. Ezell Blair, Jr. (Jibreel Khazan), Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, and David Richmond sat at the “whites only” lunch counter at a Woolworth store in Greensboro, North Carolina, and requested service. The staff refused and asked the men to leave, but the students remained for the rest of the day. On February 2, over twenty students joined the sit-in. During the following days and weeks, an interracial group of supporters—including college and high school students—sat-in and picketed the store. The Greensboro protests inspired thousands of others throughout the South to stage sit-ins against Jim Crow. By July, when Woolworth finally served diners regardless of their race, young activists were a factor in the growing civil rights movement.; Protests such as this led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which finally outlawed racial segregation in public accommodations. The closing of the Greensboro Woolworth's in 1993 presented museum curators with the opportunity to acquire this historic artifact. After extensive negotiations with Woolworth's executives and representatives of the local community, a section of the lunch counter was donated to the Smithsonian.

See more items in: Political History: Political History, Civil Rights Collection; Government, Politics, and Reform
Exhibition: Greensboro Lunch Counter
Exhibition Location: National Museum of American History

National Museum of American History

GUID (Link to Original Record): https://n2t.net/ark:/65665/ng49ca746ad-a3b0-704b-e053-15f76fa0b4fa