International Civil Rights Center & Museum

Animating an iconic landmark, the International Civil Rights Center & Museum opened in 2010 as a comprehensive museum of the Civil Rights Movement and an innovative educational organization devoted to the understanding and advancement of civil and human rights in this country and the world. It commemorates the launch, on Feb. 1, 1960, of sit-ins at a whites-only lunch counter in Greensboro, by the N.C. A&T Four college students. Their non-violent direct action challenged the American People to make good on promises of personal equality and civic inclusion enunciated in the Constitution. The fast-spreading Sit-In Movement ignited by the Greensboro Four worked to renew the Civil Rights Movement as a whole. Sit-In Movement, Inc. was founded in 1993 to acquire and restore the F.W. Woolworth's five-and-dime site of these initial sit-ins and to establish the Center and Museum here as a monument to the bravery and initiative of visionary young advocates of full citizenship and social justice.