Qualla: Greensboro sit-ins

Greensboro sit-ins: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jack Moebes, Public domain. At 4:30 in the afternoon on February 1, 1960, four freshmen from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University walked into the F.W. Woolworth's at 132 South Elm Street in downtown Greensboro. They bought toothpaste and a few other items from the regular counters - their money perfectly acceptable there. Then they sat down at the 66-seat L-shaped stainless-steel lunch counter and each asked for a cup of coffee and a donut with cream on the side. The waitress refused them, as Woolworth's policy required. They did not get up. Their names were Ezell Blair Jr. (who later took the name Jibreel Khazan), Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, and David Richmond. The country would come to know them as the Greensboro Four.

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Image: Jack Moebes | Public domain

Greensboro sit-ins: Dorm-Room Conversations

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jack Moebes, Public domain. They had been talking about it for months in their dorm rooms at A&T. Joseph McNeil had been refused service trying to buy a hot dog at the Greensboro Greyhound bus station during Christmas vacation 1959 - a small humiliation that became the breaking point. Inspired by Martin Lut...

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Image: Jack Moebes | Public domain

Greensboro sit-ins: February 2 Through February 6

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jack Moebes, Public domain. On February 2, McNeil and McCain were joined by William Smith and Clarence Henderson, and by the end of the day more than twenty Black students - four of them women - had taken seats at the counter. Reporters and a TV cameraman showed up. By February 3, the count had grown to mor...

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Image: Jack Moebes | Public domain

Greensboro sit-ins: The Spread

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit dbking from Washington, DC, CC BY 2.0. Within two weeks the sit-in movement was in Winston-Salem, Durham, Raleigh, Charlotte. Within a month it had reached Richmond, Lexington Kentucky, and Nashville, where students trained by James Lawson conducted some of the most disciplined sit-ins of the movement and desegregated...

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Image: dbking from Washington, DC | CC BY 2.0

Greensboro sit-ins: Four Workers Order Lunch

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jack Moebes, Public domain. The Greensboro Woolworth's quietly desegregated its lunch counter on July 25, 1960, almost six months after McNeil sat down. The first people served were four Black Woolworth employees - Geneva Tisdale and her colleagues - who had changed out of their work clothes and ordered a m...

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Image: Jack Moebes | Public domain

Greensboro sit-ins: What Remains

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eric Chan from Hollywood, United States, CC BY 2.0. The Greensboro Woolworth's building still stands at 132 South Elm Street. It is now the International Civil Rights Center and Museum, opened in 2010, which preserves the original lunch counter where the Greensboro Four sat. A four-seat section was acquired by the Smithsonian in 1...

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Image: Eric Chan from Hollywood, United States | CC BY 2.0