Greensboro sit-ins (1960)
Site: F.W. Woolworth Building, 132 S. Elm St., Greensboro, N.C.

Then: Four black college students asked to eat at the Woolworth’s lunch counter on Feb. 1, 1960 – a time when the counter was “whites only.” When the men were denied service and told to leave, Ezell A. Blair Jr., Franklin E. McCain, Joseph A. McNeil and David L. Richmond refused to surrender their stools, according to the National Museum of American History, part of the Smithsonian Institution.

Word of their passive protest spread, leading hundreds of other students, civil rights groups, church members and local residents to create a six-month sit-in at the counter and a boycott of the store. The lunch counter was formally desegregated on July 25, 1960.

Photo: African-American students from North Carolina A&T College participate in a sit-in at a F. W. Woolworth’s lunch counter reserved for white customers in Greensboro, N.C.