The National Park Service has designated the F.W. Woolworth Co. Building, where the four teenage HBCU freshmen from the North Carolina A&T State University staged a sit-in that buoyed the Civil Rights Movement, a National Historic Landmark.
On Feb. 1, 1960, Jibreel Khazan (formerly Ezell Blair Jr.), Joseph McNeil, the late Franklin McCain Sr., and the late David Richmond seated themselves at Woolworth’s whites-only lunch counter in downtown Greensboro. Students from Bennett College, Dudley High School, and the University of North Carolina-Greensboro joined the HBCU students in their peaceful protest, which others replicated across the country to stand up against racial inequality until Woolworths guaranteed equal access to all of its lunch counters.