Sit-Ins Led to Civil Rights Act of 1964
During the 1960s, F. W. Woolworth Company operated lunch counters at its "five-and-dime stores" on a "local custom" basis - meaning racially segregated seating in the Southern United States. As the movement to resist segregation grew, the Tupelo Woolworth store lunch Counter was the scene of local protests. While other sit-ins were contentious, the Tupelo events were peaceful. In 1964, the passage of the Civil Rights Act prompted Woolworth to announce "now the company will be able to serve all its customers in all of its stores on a desegregated basis." The Civil Rights Act was momentous for African-Americans; however as in most of the South, it would be several years before full integration was commonplace in Tupelo.
Sit-ins were an integral part of the non-violent strategy of civil disobedience and mass protests that eventually led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. On February 1, 1960, four African-American college students from the Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina asked to be served at the lunch counter of the Greensboro, North Carolina, Woolworth store. This first Woolworth sit-in had very little effect on the store that day, but when a larger group returned
the next day, wire services picked up the story, and word began to spread to other college campuses. The protests continued at the Woolworth store and spread to other food counters in Greensboro, with 54 sit-ins in 15 cities and nine states in the South reported over the next seven days. The national attention aided the students goal to accelerate the pace of the civil rights movement and showed that non-violent direct action and participation by youth could be very useful weapons in the war against segregation.