International Civil Rights Center and Museum

The International Civil Rights Center & Museum (ICRCM) is located in Greensboro, North Carolina, United States. Its building formerly housed the Woolworth's, the site of a nonviolent protest in the civil rights movement and is now a National Historic Landmark, as well as a part of the Downtown Greensboro Historic District. Four students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (NC A&T) started the Greensboro sit-ins at a "whites only" lunch counter on February 1, 1960. The four students were Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, Ezell Blair Jr. (now Jibreel Khazan), and David Richmond. The next day there were twenty students. The aim of the museum's founders is to ensure that history remembers the actions of the A&T Four, those who joined them in the daily Woolworth's sit-ins, and others around the country who took part in sit-ins and in the civil rights movement. The Museum is currently supported by earned admissions and Museum Store revenues. The project also receives donations from private donors as a means of continuing its operations. The museum was founded in 1993 and officially opened its doors fifty years to the day after the sit-in movements in Greensboro NC.

The building that now houses the museum was constructed in 1929 and was designed in the Art Deco style by local architect Charles Hartmann. It was initially known as the Whelan Building, after the Whelan Drug Company, which owned the building, operating a small drug store in one corner and leasing the rest as retail and office space. The F. W. Woolworth Company began leasing most of the building in 1939, as a replacement for a smaller location in downtown Greensboro. The store, advertised as "the largest and most modern Woolworth store in the south", and its 69-seat luncheonette opened to the public on August 10, 1939.

The store was the site of the Greensboro sit-ins, beginning on February 1, 1960, when four black students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University sat at the segregated whites-only lunch counter and refused to leave until they were served. The ensuing sit-in movement grew in popularity, with thousands gathering at Greensboro's Woolworth and Kress stores, and similar protests at dozens of other segregated sites across the South. Facing boycotts and significant declines in sales, Woolworth manager Clarence Harris relented, desegregating the store on July 25, 1960. Many other businesses followed suit, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 made such segregation illegal nationwide.

The lunch counter was remodeled around 1963, and its stools were removed during that time to be re-upholstered. When they were re-installed, there was no attempt to put them back in the same positions, making it impossible for later historians to determine which stools the Greensboro Four sat in on February 1.

While Woolworth was still an active business in the building, the site started to receive historical recognition. The portion of Sycamore Street in front of the building was renamed February One Place in a ceremony on February 1, 1990, the 30th anniversary of the first sit-in. The same year, the store donated a portion of the lunch counter to the Greensboro History Museum.

On October 14, 1993, Woolworth announced that it would close over 700 stores nationwide, including the downtown Greensboro location. A Woolworth spokesperson initially said that the company was interested in helping to preserve the building as a historic landmark. The lunch counter served its last meals on October 23, with the Rev. Jesse Jackson among hundreds who gathered there on the final day, singing "We Shall Overcome" minutes before the closure at 5 p.m. The store as a whole closed on January 22, 1994.

In November 1993, Guilford County commissioner Melvin "Skip" Alston proposed turning the building into an African-American historical museum. This was opposed by some of Alston's fellow commissioners, one of whom said that it would "even further deepen the crevices between the races". In December, Alston suggested a compromise, turning the building into a civil rights museum rather than one dedicated to African-American history more broadly. This second proposal was unanimously approved by the commission. Alston and Greensboro city councilman Earl Jones then co-founded Sit-In Movement, Inc., a nonprofit organization devoted to the purpose of creating a civil rights museum on the site. Days before the store closed in January 1994, First Citizens Bank, which owned the building, agreed to sell it to Sit-in Movement, Inc.

During the removal of store fixtures in February 1994, a section of the counter with four stools was removed for donation to the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History.