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After Reconstruction, white Southerners began to implement a series of laws that segregated African Americans and restricted their access to public accommodations. These "Jim Crow" laws worked to support white supremacy and to systematically disadvantage African Americans. When on February 1, 1960, Ezell Blair, Jr. (now Jibreel Khazan), Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil and David Richmond, four students from North Carolina Agricultural & Technical College, sat down at the white-only lunch counter in the Greensboro F.W. Woolworth's store, refusing to leave until they were served, they made a stand against white supremacy and segregation. Their activism strengthened African-American grassroots efforts to fight injustice, inspired sit-ins across the South and transformed the Civil Rights Movement.

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