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
contrary a jury of white men found Till's killers innocent The four students decided they would do something to declare their stance against this and other injustices PERSPECTIVES ANNE MOODY In 1963 African American author Anne Moody took part in a sit in at the Jackson Mississippi Woolworth's lunch counter An angry mob poured food on the protesters heads and assaulted them One dragged Moody by her hair to the store's door She got up and returned to the counter Moody wrote later After the sit in all I could think of was how sick Mississippi whites were Before the sit in I had always hated the whites in Mississippi Now I knew it was impossible for me to hate sickness The whites had a disease an incurable disease in its final stage At 4:30 p.m. on February 1 1960 the four college students entered the Woolworth store They bought a few small items Next they went to the lunch counter They sat down The manager told the worker behind the counter to ignore the four men He hoped they would simply leave They did not They stayed until
the store closed at 5 30 p m They risked verbal and physical attacks by angry whites but neither happened that afternoon However both soon would SPARKING A MOVEMENT This sit in protest launched a movement The Woolworth lunch counter sit in continued and grew Blair McCain McNeil and Richmond returned to the lunch counter and sat peacefully again on February 2 More than a dozen other students from NCATSU joined them On the third day even more students took part in the sit in They took most of the lunch counter's 65 seats Some protesters held a sit in at the neighboring department store Three white female college students joined the protest on the fourth day By the fifth day the number of students taking part had grown to 300 That day the police made their first arrests They arrested three white men for intimidating protesters One of the men had set a black protester's coat ablaze
