BREAKING BARRIERS AT WOOLWORTH On February 1 1960 four college students sat down at the Woolworth store lunch counter in Greensboro North Carolina and ordered coffee David Richmond Franklin McCain Ezell Blair Jr and Joseph McNeil were African Americans The store's lunch counter was for white people only The store wouldn't serve the four young men The four knew that would happen But they refused to move They would not leave They would sit as a way of taking The Woolworth lunch counter where people could sit on stools and order lunch refused to serve African Americans
a stand for civil rights They became known as the Greensboro Four FIGHTING FOR EQUALITY White people had treated African Americans as inferior for hundreds of years Some white people who kept them enslaved until the 1860s considered them property The end of slavery didn't end the unequal treatment of African Americans in the United States Whites enforced segregation passed race based laws and used violence against African Americans In the South a variety of laws segregated the races African Americans were kept separate from white people in public places such as buses libraries and restaurants They had to use separate bathrooms and attend separate schools African Americans were tired of the unfair and unequal treatment Some began fighting for equal rights They included four students attending North
The GEM THEATRE EXCLUSIVE COLORED THEATRE Signs noting Whites Only or Colored indicated which customers a business served Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University NCATSU CAREFULLY PLANNED Blair McCain McNeil and Richmond often discussed racial inequality at NCATSU A violent incident in 1955 stood out for them That year two white men in Mississippi tortured and killed Emmett Till The 14 year old African American youth had supposedly flirted with a white woman Despite evidence to the
