Morning Edition Remembers The Woolworth Lunch Counter Sit-In Of 1960

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Feb. 1 marks the 60th anniversary of a watershed moment in the civil rights movement, when four black college students refused to move from a Woolworth's lunch counter in 1960.

Saturday, Feb. 1, marks the 60th anniversary of a watershed moment in the civil rights movement. 

The scene took place at a Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina.  The players were four black college students who decided to go into the store, sit at the counter and refuse to move until they were served.

Morning Edition Remembers: Woolworth Lunch Counter Sit-In

That act of bravery is memorialized at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta.  

An interactive exhibit takes a visitor through a multi-sensory experience of what these four students went through.

This moment at Woolworth's inspired a group of high schoolers in North Carolina to hold a sit-in of their own in a drugstore just a few weeks later.

They became known as the Chapel Hill Nine.

Ultimately the commitment by both protests led to the desegregation of the Woolworth lunch counter on July 25, 1960.

To commemorate the 60th anniversary of these moments, the Center for Civil and Human Rights is offering free admission Saturday.

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Visitors of the Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta sit at a lunch counter with a pair of headphones and listen to a dramatic reenactment of the Woolworth's sit-in.