About the Lunch Counter

In Greensboro, hundreds of students, civil rights organizations, churches, and members of the community joined in a six-month-long protest. They challenged the company's policy of racial discrimination by sitting at the lunch counter, and, later, organizing an economic boycott of the store. Their defiance heightened many Americans' awareness of racial injustice and ultimately led to the desegregation of the F. W. Woolworth lunch counter on July 25, 1960.