Four students from North Carolina A&T College, a black college in Greensboro, asked to be served at the Woolworths’ lunch-counter in early February 1960. Remaining in place after they were refused service, they began the sit-in movement. News of the sit-ins spread rapidly and within two weeks Fisk students, led by James Lawson, had instituted their own sit-in at Nashville’s Kress store. The sit-ins were then copied in cities throughout the South, and soon sympathy sit-ins were being undertaken in Kress and Woolworths’ stores in northern cities Boston, Chicago, IL and New York, receiving the vocal support of northern black leaders Adam Clayton Powell. The fact that these stores belonged to national chains contributed to the success of the southern protests against segregation.

The sit-ins were first seen as an extension of the work of the SCLC, but, in fact, the Greensboro sitins were done independently of both the SCLC and the Congress of Racial Equality and never received the support of Martin Luther King, Jr. CORE, however, quickly attempted to lead the new sit-in movement, and the SCLC attempted to harness the energy of the student movement by establishing the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) later in the year.

The willingness of African Americans to withstand beatings and terror during the sitins opened the eyes of white southerners to the depth of black discontent. This discontent was not fully acknowledged by the SCLC with its stress on non-violence, and students became increasingly radicalized, shifting towards an emphasis on Black Power.