Seeking to harness the momentum of the sit-in movement, veteran civil rights organizer Ella Baker invited students who had taken part in the sit-ins to a gathering at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina in April 1960. acknowledged in a speech at a North Carolina church in mid-February 1960: “What is new in your fight is the fact that it was initiated, fed, and sustained by students.” Some 300 students soon joined their protest, which received widespread media coverage, sparking a movement of similar sit-ins by thousands of students at segregated establishments across the South.Ĭivil rights leaders recognized such young activists as a powerful new force in their efforts to combat racial discrimination and win equal rights for Black Americans. In February 1960, four Black college students in Greensboro, North Carolina, stayed in their seats at a segregated Woolworth’s lunch counter after the staff refused to serve them.
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