Four black students who were attending North Carolina A&T State University, Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, Ezell Blair Jr., and David Richmond planned an attack on segregation in the 1960’s. They were sick of people talking about gaining rights, but not taking action to actually acquire them. The attack turned out to be one of the biggest fights for civil rights in history.

The law stated that blacks and whites had to be separate in every way. They had separate restaurants, drinking fountains, and restrooms. It was also required that African Americans sit in the back of buses, in a different balcony in theatres, and in separate bleachers at sports events. This was segregation and this is what the four students were fighting.

Their plan of action was to simply, go into Woolworth Department store in Greensboro, New York and sit at the lunch counter. This seems like something that would not be a problem today, but blacks were prohibited from that counter and only whites were welcome. When they took their seats on February 1, 1960, they were expecting to be arrested or beaten up, but nobody touched them, they were just never served. There was even a white elderly woman who cheered them on.

The next day, they went back to sit again and more people had come to protest with them at Woolworth, at other lunch counters nearby, and even dime-stores in other cities. By February 4th, they were even joined by white students from North Carolina’s Women’s College. As soon as February 7th, there were 54 sit-ins going on in the south in fifteen cities in nine states.

The storeowners were under the impression that the protests would end after a short amount of time because everyone would give up, but this was not the case. The sit-ins went on for a majority of five months before the lunch counters decided to integrate and let African Americans eat there too. The sit-ins caused stores to lose a lot of business and Woolworth, for example, lost 20% of their anticipated sales. The original four students became known as the Greensboro Four.

Even though the counters desegregated, that was not the main impact of the sit-ins, it was the press coverage that they procured. People who watched the news at home saw the cruelty that blacks were treated with and felt sympathy for them. More and more people began to oppose segregation because of the sit-ins.

After the sit-ins the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was established and began to fight for African American rights along with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The NAACP was the major civil rights organization during the sit-ins and nothing had happened to fight civil rights without notifying them until the sit-ins. It shocked people that the NAACP was not behind the act, but the sit-ins did a lot for civil rights and spread quickly and even to some northern states. It proved that people were able to fight for their rights without the help of an organization.

There is a section of the Smithsonian Institution dedicated to the Greensboro sit-ins and millions of people visit to see it. On display, there are photographs taken by a Greensboro News & Record photographer, Jack Moebes, on the first two days of the protest. Also, the four stools that the original protesters sat on and a piece of the counter from Woolworth are included in the exhibition.

The Greensboro sit-ins caused a large group of people to get together and fight for a common cause and that is usually how results are achieved. A lot of press coverage was also given to the protest and this led to more fights against segregation in the future. Therefore, the Greensboro Sit-Ins played a huge role in the fight for civil rights.