College Changemakers: The Greensboro Four

By: Evelyn Ealey

To many, it seems as if the Civil Right Movement was long ago, however, it was only sixty years ago when segregation divided the country. We’ve all heard of sit-ins and people such as the Little Rock Nine and Ruby Bridges, but there is a group much closer to Elon that made a huge impact in the Civil Rights Movement. In honor of Black History Month, I am highlighting a group of college students that pushed for change just thirty minutes from Burlington. The Greensboro Four were young leaders that were not afraid to fight for their rights, and used their persistence and perseverance to make change happen.

David Richmond, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair Jr. (Jibreel Khazan), and Joe McNeil were freshman students at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University when they decided to take a stand against segregation in 1960. The 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka that desegregated public school was not being fairly implemented in the South, and six years after the ruling, segregation was still very present in all public places. The four young men decided that they had had enough of the inequality, and staged a sit-in on Monday February 1, 1960.

The four young men entered Woolworth’s and sat down at the “whites only” lunch counter of the restaurant. They were told that they would not be served, and they were not allowed to sit at the counter. They tried to place their orders, but no one would serve them, and eventually the Greensboro police chief was called. The chief said that there was nothing they could do as long as the boys remained nonviolent and quiet, and they did just that. As they sat, they were given nasty glares, but also unexpected words of encouragement. One elderly white woman said she was disappointed in the boys, to which McCain responded,“Ma’am, why are you disappointed in us for asking to be served like everyone else?” The woman gazed at them and said, “I’m disappointed it took you so long to do this.”

Woolworths closed early that day, and fortunately Richmond, McCain, Khazan, and McNeil left the store unharmed. Over the next few weeks more and more black protesters came to Woolworths to sit-in and protest the unequal treatment of the customers. The original four protesters were then dubbed the Greensboro Four, and on July 26, Greensboro businesses agreed to begin to serve black and white patrons equally.

The people of this story were college students, just like us, and they were able to spark some of the biggests protests of the Civil Rights Movement. Finding ways to use our voice as a generation to speak up about important issues is the only way we'll see the change that we want. No matter how young or old, you can always be the change you want to see in the world.