International Civil Rights Museum

Animating an iconic landmark recognized across the globe, the International Civil Rights Center & Museum opened in 2010 as a comprehensive museum of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States and an innovative educational organization devoted to understanding and advancing civil and human rights in this country and the world. It commemorates the Feb. 1, 1960, beginning of sit-ins at a whites-only lunch counter in Greensboro, by the N.C. A&T Four college students, reflecting careful planning carried out with colleagues at Bennett College. 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 protests served as a historical inflection point, renewing the Civil Rights Movement as a whole. Sit-In Movement, Inc. was founded in 1993 to acquire and restore the F.W. Woolworth’s site of these transformative events and to establish the Center and Museum as a monument to the bravery and initiative of visionary young advocates of full citizenship and social justice.