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Learning Resources
Racial segregation was not illegal in the United States on February 1, 1960, when four African American college students sat down at a "whites-only" lunch counter at an F. W. Woolworth store in Greensboro, North Carolina. Politely asking for service, their request was refused. When asked to leave, they remained in their seats.
In Greensboro, hundreds of students, civil rights organizations, churches, and members of the community joined in a six-month-long nonviolent protest that spread to other places in the South. Many people continued to show their unhappiness through sit-ins. Some held picket signs on the streets outside the store with messages for people to see, while other people decided to boycott. All of these protest strategies drew national attention and caused Woolworth, and other businesses that practiced segregation, to lose customers .
The protests put college students and young people into an important position in the ongoing movement to challenge racial inequality across the United States. Some of the people involved in the protests were sent to jail. Their commitment led to the end of segregation at the lunch counter on July 25, 1960; but, it took four more years before segregation finally ended across the country with the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The National Museum of American History added a portion of the Greensboro lunch counter to its collection after the Woolworth store shut down in the 1990s. Today, it is on display as one of the landmark objects in the Museum. Learn more about the counter.
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