On February 1, 1960, at 4:30pm, the four sat down at the lunch counter inside the Woolworth store at 132 South Elm Street in Greensboro.[2] The men, later also known as the A&T Four or the Greensboro Four, had purchased toothpaste and other products from a desegregated counter at the store with no problems, and then were refused service at the store's lunch counter when they each asked for a cup of coffee.[1][7][8] Following store policy, staff refused to serve the black men at the "whites only" counter and store manager Clarence Harris asked them to leave.[9] However, the four freshman stayed until the store closed that night.
The next day, more than twenty black students, recruited from other campus groups, joined the sit-in. Students from Bennett College, a college for black women in Greensboro, also joined. White customers heckled the black students, who read books and studied to keep busy, while the lunch counter staff continued to refuse service.[8]
The Greensboro Four: (left to right) David Richmond, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair, Jr., and Joseph McNeil.
Newspaper reporters and a TV videographer covered the second day, and others in the community learned of the protests. On the third day, more than 60 people came to the Woolworth store. A statement issued by Woolworth national headquarters said that the company would "abide by local custom" and maintain its segregation policy.[8]
On the fourth day, more than 300 people took part. Organizers agreed to expand the sit-in protests to include the lunch counter at Greensboro's Kress store.[8]
As early as one week after the Greensboro sit-ins began, students in other North Carolina towns launched their own. Winston-Salem, Durham, Raleigh, Charlotte, and out-of-state towns such as Lexington, Kentucky all saw protests.
The movement then spread to other Southern cities, including Richmond, Virginia and Nashville, Tennessee, where students of the Nashville Student Movement had been trained for a sit-in by civil rights activist James Lawson and already started the process when Greensboro occurred. Although the majority of these protests were peaceful, there were instances of violence.[10] In Chattanooga, Tennessee, tensions rose between blacks and whites and fights broke out.[11] In Jackson, Mississippi, students from Tougaloo College staged a sit-in on May 28, 1963, recounted in the autobiography of Anne Moody, a participant. In Coming of Age in Mississippi Moody describes their treatment from whites who were at the counter when they sat down, the formation of the mob in the store and how they managed finally to leave.[12]
As the sit-ins continued, tensions grew in Greensboro and students began a far-reaching boycott of stores that had segregated lunch counters. Sales at the boycotted stores dropped by a third, leading the stores' owners to abandon their segregation policies.[2] On Monday, July 25, 1960, after nearly $200,000 in losses ($1.6 million today) due to the demonstrations, store manager Clarence Harris asked 3 black employees to change out of work clothes into street clothes and order a meal at the counter. These were the first to be served at the store's lunch counter, an event that received little publicity.[13] The entire Woolworth was desegregated, serving blacks and whites alike, although Woolworth lunch counters in other Tennessee cities, such as Jackson, continued to be segregated until around 1965, despite many protests.[8][14]
