The population of Greensboro, North Carolina, grew to 302,296 in 2023 from 119,574 on February 1, 1960, when four Black college students began a sit-in to integrate that city's F.W. Woolworth's lunch counter.

Jump to:

Although the American Civil War had ended nearly a century earlier, many African Americans lived a decidedly separate and unequal existence, especially in the southern United States. Informal and formal rules dictated where they could shop, eat, go to school, and even drink from water fountains. The consequences for failing to adhere to these rules often led to fines, imprisonment, and even violence. Even thought the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregated public schools were unconstitutional in its 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, the ruling had little impact on other forms of segregation, including at privately owned lunch counters like the Greensboro F.W. Woolworth's.

In 1960, Black residents accounted for more than a quarter of Greensboro's population, but formal laws and informal segregation rules forbid them from eating, drinking, or receiving services at many of the same establishments as the city's White population. Just as Rosa Parks chose nonviolent resistance to protest the segregation of public buses in Montgomery, Alabama, on December 1, 1955, college students Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair, Jr., and David Richmond planned their own protest by calmly requesting service at the Greensboro F.W. Woolworth's lunch counter on February 1, 1960. The four men purchased toothpaste from the desegregated section of the store, but the lunch counter wait staff and manager refused to serve them when they ordered donuts and coffee at the Whites-only lunch counter. When store manager Clarence Harris asked his supervisor how to respond, he was told to refuse service to the students. Management assumed they would grow tired and leave. The "Greensboro Four" remained unserved at the lunch counter until the store closed that evening.

The next day, 25 men and women from local colleges joined the Greensboro Four at Woolworth's lunch counter. Again, staff refused to serve the Black students as store patrons jeered the group sitting quietly at the lunch counter. More than 60 high school and college students arrived at the lunch counter on February 3; 300 arrived on February 4; and an estimated 1,400 Black students sought service on February 6! Those unable to get inside the packed restaurant picketed outside on the sidewalk. The images of the protest were published in newspapers and magazines and seen on televised news broadcasts around the world. Despite growing tension and the large crowds that gathered to support or antagonize the protesters, the Greensboro sit-in remained nonviolent. Soon, students in other southern cities, like Winston Salem, North Carolina; Richmond, Virginia; Jackson, Mississippi; and Nashville, Tennessee followed Greensboro's lead by staging their own sit-ins at segregated lunch counters, libraries, museums, and beaches. Some of these protests required police intervention as angry mobs threatened and attacked the White and Black students participating in the sit-ins. Many Americans were shocked by images published by news outlets showing angry White patrons taunting the students and pouring ketchup, mustard, and sugar on their heads as they sat quietly at lunch counters.

Within weeks of the start of the Greensboro sit-in, nearby establishments began desegregating fearing they would face similar protests and boycotts. Despite intense pressure, Woolworth's stubbornly refused to serve the Black protestors for more than five months.  By July 1960, the Greensboro Woolworth's was facing sales' losses of more than $200,000 ($2.1 million in 2024) and store manager Harris' salary had been cut because of the store's poor performance. Harris finally relented on July 25, 1960. With little fanfare, he invited several Black Woolworth's employees to eat at store's lunch counter.

The Greensboro Woolworth's lunch counter served all patrons for more than three decades after the 1960 sit-in. In October 1993, Woolworth's served its last meals at the Greensboro lunch counter. Soon after, the store donated a portion of the lunch counter to the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of American History. Today, the historic F.W. Woolworth's building in Greensboro is home to the International Civil Rights Center and Museum and a large, restored section of the original lunch counter.

You can learn more about Greensboro and the student-led Woolworth's lunch counter sit-in from U.S. Census Bureau data and records. For example:

• Greensboro was founded in 1808 and named for American Revolutionary War General Nathanael Greene. Sixty-two years later, the 1870 Census counted just 497 people living in Greensboro. By 1900, the population of Greensboro had grown to 10,035. Two months after the Black students began their non-violent sit-in to desegregate the lunch counter in the city's Woolworth's, the 1960 Census counted 119,574 people living in Greensboro. In 2023, the Census Bureau's estimated Greensboro was home to 302,296 people.
• After its founding in 1808, Greensboro replaced the hamlet of Guilford Court House as the county seat of Guilford County, North Carolina. At that time, the county was home to approximately 11,420 people. When the Greensboro Sit-In began, 246,520 called Guilford County home. With an estimated population of 549,866 in 2023, Guilford was the third largest county in North Carolina behind Wake (1,190,275) and Mecklenburg (1,163,701) counties.
• Founded in Utica, NY by Frank Winfield Woolworth in 1879, Woolworth's grew to become the largest department store chain in the world by 1979 with approximately 4,000 locations. Less than two decades later, stiff retail competition forced the last American Woolworth department stores to close in 1997. Today, the Census Bureau collects data from establishments like Woolworth's in NAICS sector 45211, Department stores. In 2022, the economic census found that there were 3,098 establishments in the sector. These establishments employed 266,707 employees and had annual sales of nearly $60.7 billion.
• Years before the 1960 Greensboro Sit-In that began, activists staged one of the first civil rights sit-ins in Alexandria, Virginia. On August 21, 1939, five Black men—William Evans, Edward Gaddis, Morris Murray, Clarence Strange, and Otto Lee Albert Tucker—entered the Whites-only Alexandria library and began quietly reading books. Police escorted the men from the library and charged them with disorderly conduct. The city responded by building the "separate but equal" Robert H. Robinson Library for Black patrons the following year. Eight decades later, the Alexandria Circuit Court dismissed all charges against the five men, ruling that they were "lawfully exercising their constitutional rights to free assembly, speech and to petition the government to alter the established policy of sanctioned segregation at the time of their arrest" and that no charges should have been filed.
• After the 1939 Alexandria Library Sit-In, Otto Lee Albert Tucker graduated from Howard University and served in World War II. He passed the Virginia State Bar in 1946 and opened a law office in Alexandria becoming a vocal advocate for civil rights. According to his 1950 Census record, he also worked as an enumerator for the U.S. Census Bureau!
• On January 20, 1955, a group of Black Morgan State College students led by Helena Sorrell Hicks held a brief sit-in at Read's Drug Store in Baltimore, Maryland. Two days later, Arthur Nattans, Sr., president of the Read's drug store chain, purchased space in the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper to announce that, "We will serve all customers throughout our entire stores, including the fountains, and this becomes effective immediately." Nonviolent protests also integrated lunch counters at drug store chains in Wichita, Kansas, and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in the summer of 1958.

When budget cuts nearly ended the economic census in the 1950s, Secretary of Commerce Charles Sinclair Weeks gathered economic experts like Ralph J. Watkins to study the value of the program.

The Appraisal of Census Programs published by the "Watkins Commission" on February 16, 1954, argued that economic census data were too valuable to stop collecting. In response, Congress passed Public Law 83-411 in June 1954, providing for censuses of manufacturing, mineral industries, and other businesses (including the distributive trades and service establishments) in 1955 relating to the year 1954.

The Census Bureau today conducts the economic census every 5 years, most recently in 2022.