Today in the US, Black history month begins, on the anniversary of civil rights sit-ins beginning in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1960 when four Black college students refused to move from a Woolworth lunch counter when they were denied service. While many sit-ins had taken place in years prior, none had previously sparked a mass direct action movement against Jim Crow segregation laws.
On this day, 1 February 1960, Joseph McNeil, Jibreel Khazan, David Richmond and Franklin McCainand began their protest, and refused to leave Woolworth’s when directed to by management. A police officer soon arrived, but didn’t appear to know what to do other than look vaguely threatening. Eventually the manager decided to close the store, and then the men went home. McCain later told Christopher Wilson, a journalist with Smithsonian magazine, “Almost instantaneously, after sitting down on a simple, dumb stool, I felt so relieved. I felt so clean, and I felt as though I had gained a little bit of my manhood by that simple act”.
The protesters then continued organising, and came back the following day with up to 16 more people, and within a few days there were hundreds, including some white students from the Women’s College of the University of North Carolina. The movement then spread around the country. By the following September over 70,000 people had participated in sit ins against segregation.
The Greensboro Woolworth’s desegregated on July 25, 1960, and overt segregation was eventually banned in 1964.
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