5 Things to Know About the Greensboro Sit-In and the Four HBCU Students Who Started It

Started a Movement

The nonviolent sit-in lunch-counter protests in Greensboro, N.C., started Feb. 1, 1960, and ended July 25. Due to the valiant work of N.C. A&T students Ezell Blair Jr. (now known as Jibreel Khazan), David Richmond, Franklin McCain and Joseph McNeil, the Woolworth department store chain ended its policy of racial segregation.

The group was inspired by the 1947 “Freedom Ride” organized by the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) in which interracial activists rode across the South to test a recent Supreme Court decision that banned segregation in interstate bus travel. They also were spurred to action by the 1955 murder of Emmet Till in Mississippi.