Greensboro Sit-In: Borgerrettighedsprotest i USA

I chose this topic because I’m really into black history, and I also didn’t really know about this event, so I was able to learn about something new.

North Carolina before the event

In the early 1950s, a series of lawsuits reached federal courts challenging the 1896 ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson that public accomodations for people of different races could be separate but equal. Civil rights groups argued that racially segregated schools were inherently unequal, and in 1954, the Supreme Court agreed. Brown v. Board of Education ordered the end of separate black and white schools but making integration a reality took years of struggle and protest, and debates over school integration continue to this day.

During this time the cold war was also going on, and a election was also going on.

What happened?

The Greensboro sit-in was a civil rights protest that started in 1960, when young African American students staged a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, and refused to leave after being denied service. The sit-in movement soon spread to college towns throughout the South. Though many of the protesters were arrested for trespassing, disorderly conduct or disturbing the peace, their actions made an immediate and lasting impact, forcing Woolworth’s and other establishments to change their segregationist policies.