The Greensboro sit-in was a critical turning point in black and American history, bringing the fight for civil rights to the national stage. Their use of nonviolence inspired Freedom Riders and others to take up the cause of integration in the South, advancing the cause of equal rights in the United States. Central to the growth of the action of the Greensboro Four and the students who joined them at Woolworth's in early February 1960, was the strategy and planning that occurred more than a year earlier and 400 miles away in Nashville, Tennessee. Unrelated actions like this turned it into a national movement with thousands of students across the country.
On February 1, 1960, four African-American college students entered the Woolworth store in Greensboro, North Carolina. Each one ordered a meal, paid for it, kept the receipt and sat at the white-only counter, where they waited to be served. Now Jibreel Khaza
(n), David Richmond, Franklin McCain and Joseph McNeil began a protest sit-in at a whites only coffee shop in Woolworth in Greensboro, North Carolina, where they had been denied service. The Bennett Belles were at the forefront.
A lot of people talk about the Woolworth sit-in in 1960, but many don't realize that it was planned on the Bennett campus. Bennett's women played leadership roles in terms of planning that movement. The four men sat down in February and were therefore very important to do that initial work and also continue that work.
