[14] The Greensboro Four (as they would soon be known) were Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair Jr., and David Richmond, all young black students at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in their freshman year who often met in their dorm rooms to discuss what they could do to stand against segregation.

[15] They were inspired by Martin Luther King Jr. and his practice of nonviolent protest, and specifically wanted to change the segregational policies of F. W. Woolworth Company in Greensboro, North Carolina.

During Christmas vacation of 1959, McNeil attempted to buy a hot dog at the Greensboro Greyhound Lines bus station, but was refused service.

[16] They came up with a simple plan: they would occupy seats at the local F. W. Woolworth Company store, ask to be served, and when they were inevitably denied service, they would not leave.

[17] On February 1, 1960, at 4:30 pm ET, the four sat down at the 66-seat L-shaped stainless steel lunch counter inside the F. W. Woolworth Company store at 132 South Elm Street in Greensboro, North Carolina.

[20] The four freshmen stayed until the store closed that night, and then went back to the North Carolina A&T University campus, where they recruited more students to join them the next morning.

[21] The next day, on February 2, 1960, more than twenty black students (including four women), recruited from other campus groups, joined the sit-in.

White customers heckled the black students, who read books and studied, while the lunch counter staff continued to refuse service.

The group now included students from North Carolina A&T University, Bennett College, and Dudley High School, and they filled the entire seating area at the lunch counter.

[26] Organizers agreed to expand the sit-in protests to include the lunch counter at Greensboro's S. H. Kress & Co. store that day.

"[28][29] The sit-in movement then spread to other Southern cities, including Winston-Salem, Durham, Raleigh, Charlotte, Richmond, Virginia, and Lexington, Kentucky.

[19] In Jackson, Mississippi, students from Tougaloo College staged a sit-in on May 28, 1960, recounted in the autobiography of Anne Moody, a participant.

In Coming of Age in Mississippi, Moody describes their treatment from whites who were at the counter when they sat down, the formation of the mob in the store and how they managed finally to leave.

[32] The sit-ins spread to other forms of public accommodation, including transport facilities, swimming pools, lunch counters, libraries, art galleries, parks and beaches and museums, primarily in the South.

[2] On Monday, July 25, 1960, after nearly $200,000 in losses ($2.1 million in 2023 dollars), and a reduction in salary for not meeting sales goals, store manager Clarence Harris asked four black employees, Geneva Tisdale, Susie Morrison, Anetha Jones, and Charles Bess,[34] to change out of their work clothes and order a meal at the counter.

[41] In 2002, the February One monument and sculpture by James Barnhill, depicting the Greensboro Four, was erected on North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University's campus.