The Peridot's Black History fact for today is dedicated to the A&T Four. On February 1, 1960, four Black students from North Carolina A&T College, Ezell Blair, Jr. (now Jibreel Khazan), David Richmond, Franklin McCain and Joseph McNeil, sat and asked to be served at F. W. Woolworth’s “whites only” lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina. They were denied service, but returned the following days with more students from A&T, Bennett College for Women, and Dudley High School. This event sparked the Sit-in movement, the non-violent protest led by Black college students that spread across the American south from 1960 to 1964 for desegregation. By July of 1960 F. W. Woolworth’s, the national drugstore chain, agrees to serve all “properly dressed and well behaved people,” regardless of race.
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Wikimedia File: Greensboro Four, Feb 1960.jpg
The February One Monument on the campus of North Carolina A&T State University by James Barnhill