Today we celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Greensboro Sit-In. On February 1, 1960 four A&T students walked downtown to the Woolworth’s lunch counter to sit down at the Whites Only counter. The actions of these four young men will forever be apart of the Civil Rights Movement. Each year the A&T FOUR reunite on the campus of North Carolina A&T State University.
Check the story below:
In one remarkable day, four college freshmen changed the course of American history. On February 1, 1960, Ezell Blair, Jr. (now Jibreel Khazan), David Richmond, Franklin McCain and Joseph McNeil—later dubbed the Greensboro Four—began a sit-in at a Woolworth's lunch counter in a small city in North Carolina. The act of simply sitting down to order food in a restaurant that refused service to anyone but whites is now widely regarded as one of the pivotal moments in the American Civil Rights Movement. Offering an unusually intimate portrait of four men whose moral courage at ages 17 and 18 not only changed public accommodation laws in North Carolina but also served as a blueprint for non-violent protests throughout the 1960s, FEBRUARY ONE: The Story of the Greensboro Four reveals how these idealistic college students became friends and inspired one another to stage the sit-in, and how the burden of history has impacted their lives ever since.
Despite hard-fought gains in the fight for racial equality, segregation was still firmly entrenched in 1960 America. Black citizens were still treated as second-class citizens. The brutal 1955 lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till—an event that first made Greensboro Four members aware of the violent consequences of racism—served as a call for change. Recent advances in Civil Rights included the 1954 Brown vs. the Board of Education U.S. Supreme Court decision, the 1955–56 Montgomery bus boycott and the 1957 desegregation of Little Rock High School in Arkansas. But by 1960, the movement had hit a lull.
On February 1, dressed in their Sunday best, the four men sat down at the lunch counter. Frank McCain remembers that he knew then this would be the high point of his life: "I felt clean... I had gained my manhood by that simple act." The four were refused service. When they did not leave, the store manager closed the lunch counter. In the days that followed, more students from local colleges joined them. The Civil Rights Movement was the first major social movement to be covered by television news, so word of the events in Greensboro spread across the nation like a prairie fire. Within just a few days, students were sitting in at lunch counters in 54 cities around the South.
Via PBS
For the complete of the story feel free to click the link below!!
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/februaryone/film.html
I am proud to be an AGGIE!!! AGGIE PRIDE!!!!
Also if you are in the DMV click the link below to find out about activities during Black History Month sponsored by WPGC
WPGC - Feb 1st - 24th - Join the Student Sit-Ins, East Wing, National Museum of American History
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