feb 1, 1960 - Greensboro Four

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On February 1, 1960, a group of four freshmen from the Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina (now North Carolina A&T State University), a historically black college, began a sit-in movement in downtown Greensboro. After making purchases at the F.W. Woolworth department store, they sat at the “whites only” lunch counter. They were refused service and eventually asked to leave. The Greensboro Four, as they came to be called, however, remained seated until closing and returned the next day with about 20 other African American students. The sit-in grew in the following weeks with protestors taking every seat in the establishment and spilling out of the store. As protestors were arrested, others would take their places so that the establishment was unceasingly occupied. The protest spread to other cities, including Atlanta and Nashville. After months of protests, facilities began to desegregate throughout the country, and the Greensboro Woolworth’s started to serve African American patrons in July.




1961: Freedom Rides
The Freedom Rides began on May 4, 1961, with a group of seven African Americans and six whites, who boarded two buses bound for New Orleans. Testing the Supreme Court’s ruling on the case Boynton v. Virginia (1960), which extended an earlier ruling banning segregated interstate bus travel (1946) to include bus terminals and restrooms, the so-called Freedom Riders used facilities for the opposite race as their buses made stops along the way. The group was confronted by violence in South Carolina, and, on May 14, when one bus stopped to change a slashed tire, the vehicle was firebombed and the Freedom Riders were beaten. Unable to travel farther, the original riders were replaced by a second group of 10, partly organized by the SNCC, originating in Nashville. As riders were either arrested or beaten, more groups of Freedom Riders would take their place. On May 29 U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy ordered the Interstate Commerce Commission to enforce bans on segregation more strictly, an edict that took effect in September.

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