Greensboro
Four students sat at Woolworth's counter in 1960 and changed history. From textiles to Toyota batteries, now NC's 3rd-largest city.
Greensboro changed history with a lunch counter. On February 1, 1960, four Black students from North Carolina A&T—Ezell Blair Jr., David Richmond, Franklin McCain, and Joseph McNeil—sat down at the whites-only Woolworth's lunch counter on South Elm Street. They had just purchased toothpaste at a desegregated counter in the same store without incident. The contradiction was the point. Within days, sit-ins spread across the South, organized by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. On July 25, 1960, Woolworth's desegregated its Greensboro counter—a pivotal victory for nonviolent civil rights protest.
Before the sit-ins, Greensboro was a textile town. Henry Humphreys built North Carolina's first steam-powered cotton mill here in 1828, and textiles, tobacco, and furniture defined the Piedmont Triad economy for the next century. The mills are mostly gone now, but the infrastructure remains: Greensboro's central location made it a logistics hub, with FedEx operating regional facilities here.
The economy has diversified dramatically. Honda Aircraft Company manufactures jets here. Toyota announced a $1.3 billion battery plant in 2021 for electric vehicle production. Volvo and Mack Trucks maintain North American headquarters. The Fresh Market, Wrangler, and Kontoor Brands are headquartered locally. Population reached 307,381 in 2024, making Greensboro North Carolina's third-largest city.
The Woolworth's building is now the International Civil Rights Center and Museum, opened on the 50th anniversary of the sit-ins in 2010. The lunch counter and stools remain in their original location. By 2026, Greensboro bets that the city where four students changed America can reinvent itself once more—from textiles to trucks to batteries, with the sit-in counter as its moral compass.