Today in History: Feb. 1, 1960 (H/T to the peace history blog at peacebutton.info.)
Four black college students sat down at the Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, and were refused service because of their race. To protest the segregation of the eating facilities, they remained and sat-in at the lunch counter until the store closed.
The returned the next day and the next, and "Their passive resistance and peaceful sit-down demand helped ignite a youth-led movement to challenge racial inequality throughout the South," says the Smithsonian Museum of American History.
On of the four, Franklin McCain, died Jan. 9 this year. The Washington Post obituary of Me. McCain has a fine narrative of the first sit-in. It notes, that McCain and his three fellow students " like many civil rights activists before and after them, demonstrated the power of peaceful resistance by ordinary people."
