Whites-only Woolworth lunch counter sent to Smithsonian Institution

Jet, June 6, 1994

On Feb. 1, 1960, four Black college students sat down at a Whites-only lunch counter at a Woolworth's department store in Greensboro, NC, challenging segregation laws and helping to energize the American Civil Rights Movement.

Now that lunch counter is going on display in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.

The Smithsonian's Museum of American History will house an 8-foot section of the counter, four stools, a soda fountain, pie case and other articles from the Woolworth's store in Greensboro, which closed recently. The items were donated by Woolworth Corp.

Joseph McNeil, one of the four protesters who climbed onto those stools 34 years ago, called the items "symbolic of a very small part of a massive movement to improve the condition of mankind."

"I think it is important to have those types of artifacts around to never let us forget from where we've come as a country, so we never have to revisit those things again," McNeil said.

McNeil was 17 years old when he and three fellow students at North Carolina A&T State University--Franklin McCain, Billy Smith and Clarence Henderson--decided to challenge laws barring Blacks from many public facilities in the South.