On February 1, 1960 four freshmen from North Carolina A&T University entered a popular restaurant and sat at the lunch counter, an act of defiance during segregation.
Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, Ezell Blair Jr. and David Richmond’s actions sparked a movement of sit-ins at “Whites Only” lunch counters across the U.S., the south in particular.
Now 50 years later, the men who started a movement are being commemorated with the opening of the new African-American history museum, the International Civil Rights Center and Museum in Greensboro.
Three members of the Greensboro Four will be in attendance at the opening, McCain, McNeil and Blair Jr without Richmond who passed away in 1990.
The museum is in the same building where the sit-ins took place and has the section of the lunch counter and stools where the men sat.
Two years before the Greensboro Four’s brave defiance there was the 1958 Dockum Drug Store sit-in in Wichita, Kansas. During the sit-in two members of the NAACP Youth Council sat at the eatery’s lunch counter for weeks until the owner relented and served them.
Congratulations to them!
