Greensboro Sit-Ins Begin

On February 1, 1960, four Black college freshmen — Ezell Blair Jr., Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, and David Richmond — sat down at a whites-only Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, and refused to leave when denied service. Their act of nonviolent resistance sparked a wave of sit-ins across the South within weeks. The movement led directly to the founding of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and forced the desegregation of lunch counters across the region by year's end.