Greensboro

Greensboro is a city in North Carolina whose history includes the 1960 Greensboro sit-ins, a major campaign of nonviolent protest against segregated public facilities.

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Greensboro sit-ins: A 1960 student protest in Greensboro, North Carolina, against racial segregation at a Woolworth's lunch counter. The sit-ins began downtown and became the city's most widely known civil rights event.
Franklin McCain: An American civil rights activist and one of the four students who initiated the Greensboro sit-ins. McCain was among the first students to challenge segregation at the Woolworth's counter.
Sit-in movement: A wave of student-led protests beginning in 1960 that challenged segregation by occupying spaces reserved for white people. Greensboro's protest became the opening action in a rapidly expanding wave of sit-ins.
Civil Rights Movement: A broad struggle for racial equality and the end of legally enforced racial discrimination in the United States, especially during the 1950s and 1960s. The Greensboro sit-ins formed one episode in this national movement.
Woolworth's lunch counter sit-in: The protest begun by four Black college students at a segregated Greensboro lunch counter on February 1, 1960. This counter was the site of the protest that launched the Greensboro sit-ins.
Joseph McNeil: An American civil rights activist and one of the four students who began the Greensboro sit-ins. McNeil helped initiate the protest after discussing nonviolent action with fellow students.
Nonviolent resistance: A method of pursuing political change through organized action that avoids physical violence. The protesters used disciplined nonviolence to confront segregation without attacking its defenders.
Civil Rights Act of 1964: A United States federal law that prohibited discrimination in public accommodations and employment on specified grounds, including race. The law outlawed the kind of racial exclusion the Greensboro protesters opposed.
Greensboro Four: The four North Carolina A&T students who began the Greensboro sit-ins: Ezell Blair Jr., David Richmond, Franklin McCain, and Joseph McNeil. Their decision to sit at the counter set the city's protest in motion.
Ezell Blair Jr.: An American civil rights activist, later known as Jibreel Khazan, and one of the Greensboro Four. Blair's participation connected the sit-in's first day to years of student activism.