Lunch counter and stools that the four protesters in Greensboro sat onWhen they returned to the university, the four students called on others to join them the next day at Woolworth's. They returned to the lunch counter with four black women. They sat there for four hours. No one would serve them. Some white customers made angry comments. Newspaper and television reporters appeared. So did the local police.

The next day more than sixty black students took every seat at the lunch counter. Some of the protesters were from a local high school. The protesters demanded that the Woolworth Company permit blacks and whites to eat at its lunch counters.

By the end of March, similar sit-ins were taking place in fifty-five cities in thirteen states.

Sit-ins are a powerful form of non-violent resistance. The Greensboro sit-in was not the first in the United States. But it was the most influential at the time. President Dwight Eisenhower announced his sympathy for the protesters. He said they were acting for the "equality that they are guaranteed by the Constitution."

The sit-ins were successful. Within the next year or two many lunch counters and other public places permitted blacks and whites together in many southern towns. And the protests helped pass the Civil Rights Act of Nineteen Sixty-Four.

On Monday in Greensboro, officials will open the International Civil Rights Center and Museum. The museum is in the former F.W.Woolworth store. The sixteen exhibits include a film recreation of the sit-in story as well as the four counter seats used by the first four protesters.