Greensboro Sit-Ins 1960: Toothpaste Receipts at the Woolworth Counter

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On February 1, 1960, four freshmen from North Carolina A&T, Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair Jr. and David Richmond, walked into the F.W. Woolworth store on South Elm Street in Greensboro around 4:30 p.m. McNeil had been refused a hot dog at a Greyhound terminal over Christmas break. Sit-ins were not new: Samuel Wilbert Tucker organized one at an Alexandria, Virginia library in 1939, CORE held them in the 1940s, and students had desegregated drugstores in Baltimore, Wichita and Oklahoma City in the 1950s. The four first bought toothpaste and other items and kept their receipts, then sat at the 66-seat L-shaped lunch counter and ordered coffee and a donut.

Refused service, Blair asked why their money was good at one counter and not another. Manager Clarence Harris, advised by his supervisor to wait it out, did not call police, and the students stayed until closing. The next day more than 20 students came with textbooks, and that night they formed the Student Executive Committee for Justice and wrote to Woolworth's president. Students from Bennett College and white women from the Women's College joined, and police arrested hecklers rather than protesters. On February 6 a bomb threat closed the stores. Within months sit-ins spread to more than 55 cities in 13 states with about 70,000 participants, and a boycott cut sales 33 percent. Woolworth integrated the counter on July 25, 1960.

• A Black employee at the counter called the four troublemakers, while an elderly white customer said she was proud of them.
• Klan chaplain George Dorsett arrived at the store as hostility grew.
• Woolworth's losses equaled over $2 million in today's money, and managers took pay cuts.
• The first Black customers served were four store employees, including Geneva Tisdale, sent to order in street clothes.
• Sections of the counter are displayed at the Smithsonian, and the Greensboro building is now a civil rights museum.