James L. Farmer, Jr.

John Lewis was there.

James Farmer was there.

Fred Shuttlesworth was there.

Bob Moses was there.

These sit-ins were an outgrowth of earlier nonviolent integration efforts in Chicago by an organization called the Fellowship of Reconciliation in 1942.

James Farmer, who would eventually be the leader of the Congress of Racial Equality, also known as CORE, was at the forefront of those sitting.

On February 1, 1960, Ezell Blair Jr., David Richman, Franklin McCain, and Joseph McNeil, who had become known, collectively, as the Greensboro Four, started off these protests by asking for service at an all-white lunch counter in the Woolworth's store of Greensboro, North Carolina.

And after they asked, they were denied.