The Greensboro Four were four young black men who staged the first sit-in at Greensboro. They were Ezell Blair Jr., David Richmond, Franklin McCain and Joseph McNeil. All four were students from North Carolina Agricultural & Technical College.
The Greensboro Four were influenced by the non-violent protest techniques practiced by Mohandas Gandhi, as well as the Freedom Rides organized by the Congress for racial equality in 1947.
Participants in the Freedom Rides were interracial activists who rode across the South in buses to test a recent Supreme Court decision banning segregation and interstate bus travel. The Greensboro Four were also spurred into action by the brutal murder of young Emmett Till in 1955 who was killed for “allegedly” whistling at a white woman in a Mississippi store. On February 1, 1960, the four students sat down at the Woolworth’s lunch counter in downtown Greensboro. Denied service, the four young men refused to give up their seats and this is their story.
Understanding all too well the difficulties children of mixed race have in navigating both sides in the cultural tug of war, it is important to hear from them directly. We included Meghan Markle, whose father is German and mother is African American, as she is the first American who has married into the Royal family since 1937.
Marie Van Brittan Brown (October 30, 1922 – February 2, 1999) was an African-American inventor, becoming the originator of the home security system in 1966, along with her husband Albert Brown, a patent was granted in 1969. Brown was born in Jamaica, Queens, New York. She worked as a nurse and her husband was an electronics technician so their work hours were often on opposite ends of the spectrum.