International Civil Rights Center and Museum

Museum in the original Woolworth's building where the 1960 sit-in launched a movement

The most important place in Greensboro by some distance. The museum occupies the original F. W. Woolworth's Five and Dime building on South Elm Street, and a portion of the original lunch counter has been preserved exactly where the four A&T students sat down on 1 February 1960. The rest of the building has been turned into a substantial museum tracing the African American struggle for civil rights through the 19th and 20th centuries, with extensive material on segregation, the Greensboro sit-in, and what followed.

Visits are by guided tour only and last about 75 minutes. Book ahead in summer — the tours fill up. Allow time afterwards to walk around downtown; the city's main civic monuments are within a few blocks.

things to do museum sight
A story
On 1 February 1960, four Black freshmen from North Carolina A&T — Ezell Blair Jr, Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, and David Richmond — sat down at the whites-only Woolworth's lunch counter and ordered coffee. They were refused, and they stayed. By the next morning students from across the South were copying them. Within six months, the Woolworth's chain had desegregated its lunch counters.