The Greensboro Historical Museum recently welcomed Eastern Guilford High School students for a showing of February One, a documentary about the 1960 Woolworth sit-ins. The film offers a unique profile of the four freshmen from NC A&T State University whose challenge to the system of segregation revived the Civil Rights Movement and gave direction to student-led protests.

“What a joy it is to know that students of different races can come together at the museum to see and learn about the Civil Rights Movement and Greensboro’s part in events that gave opportunities to millions of Americans. Nothing like that would have taken place when I was in high school because I grew up in the segregated South and had practically no contact with white people.” said Museum Educational Assistant Jerry Bell.

Using images and film from the 1960 sit-ins, the documentary February One presents the four freshmen, now in their middle years – Jibreel Khazan (formerly Ezell Blair, Jr.), Joseph McNeill, Franklin McCain, and David Richmond (deceased), plus other witnesses – and allows them to speak about what they saw and felt during those days of protest.

These young men describe how they became inseparable friends at NC A&T and shared their feelings about segregation. Ezbell Blair, born and raised in Greensboro,said that he learned as a boy: “Do not incite white people to harm you or your friends.” The film surrounds the telling of their lives with images of the segregated South – the signs for “whites only” and “colored” and the street marches, speeches, and sit-ins protesting racial discrimination.

The courage of the Greensboro Four on February 1, 1960, became a trumpet call for action, especially to young people. In two months, the sit-in movement spread to 54 cities in nine states. “It is important for my students to see this film and hear people with different perspectives. The Woolworth sit-ins changed peoples’ ideas,” says Tarnae Offhaus, social studies teacher at Eastern.

Integration of the Woolworth lunch counters came on July 25, 1960, after intensive picketing and disruption to downtown business. Greensboro was the third city in North Carolina to break with Jim Crow tradition and serve African Americans on the same basis as whites, following Winston-Salem and Charlotte.

After the film, Dr. Claude Barnes, an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at NC A&T, answered students’ questions about growing up in segregated Greensboro. “During an elementary school class field trip to the planetarium, I went into the “whites only” bathroom by mistake,” said Barnes. “The trip ended, and we all had to return to our school.”

The Eastern students concluded their museum trip with a tour of two exhibits focusing on African-American history, the Greensboro Woolworth exhibit with artifacts and images from the sit-ins and an exhibit of images of African Americans whose accomplishments have made Greensboro a better place to live.