Private: Civil Rights and the Greensboro Four

Fifty years ago today, four black college students undertook a simple act of protest that helped accelerate the civil rights movement and changed history forever. Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair Jr., David Richmond, and Joe McNeil entered the F.W. Woolworth's store in Greensboro, N.C., took their seats at the whites-only lunch counter, and asked for coffee and doughnuts. The waitress refused to serve them, but rather than leave the store, the four students remained at the counter in silent protest of the segregation at that store in Greensboro and at lunch counters across the South.

While the Greensboro Four did not pioneer sit-ins, their act of defiance attracted the attention of other students and catalyzed a movement that made national headlines. Their protest reignited forward progress in the Civil Rights Movement at a time when the Movement arguably was lagging. In 1954 for instance, Brown v. Board of Education paved the way for integrated public schools, but desegregation was only occurring at one percent per year; change was long overdue. The success of the sit-ins resulted in many businesses desegregating, which instilled a newfound sense of hope in the movement, and much needed encouragement that segregation would soon be a practice of the past.

Following the Woolworth's protest, black students across the South began to participate in sit-ins at restaurants, swim-ins at pools, read-ins at libraries, and a host of other protests against segregation. Within a year of the Greensboro Four's protest approximately 50,000 individuals took part in sit-ins in more than 100 cities. The wave of protests dealt a significant economic blow to businesses in the south. It was estimated that Woolworth's alone lost $200,000 in business in the months following the Greensboro protest. It was a strategy similar to that used by blacks in Montgomery during the bus boycotts; leverage the economy to disrupt segregationists even as the lingering manifestations of Jim Crow left many blacks in the south with few resources to combat systemic racial injustices.

It worked. Business began to desegregate, Freedom Riders launched a successful, albeit at times bloody, challenge to segregation on interstate busses, Martin Luther King, Jr. led the March on Washington, and just four years after the Greensboro Four left their indelible mark on the Civil Rights Movement, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed segregation and discrimination in public venues. A heroic act of defiance redefined history of justice and equality.

Civil rights, Equality and Liberty