(WLAX/WEUX) – On the first day of Black History Month, we recognize the anniversary of the Greensboro Sit-In.

On February first, 1960, four African American college students sat down at an all-white Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina.

When they were refused service, the men remained in their seats. That sit-in started a six month protest that drew national attention, and it was protests like this one that led to the passing of the civil rights act of 1964, which outlawed racial segregation.

A section of that Woolworth lunch counter now sits at the Smithsonian Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.