March 16, 2021 – 61st Anniversary Lunch Counter Integration

Woolworth Building with WMF logo

Alamo Plaza

The Coalition for the Woolworth Building will hold a commemorative event led by the San Antonio Branch NAACP.  Join us in front of the Woolworth Building from 10 to 11 AM.

Who were the people that brought about the first peaceful and voluntary integration of the 1960 sit-in movement?  Come find out.  Masks and social distance encouraged.

 

On February 1, 1960,  African American students peacefully opposed racial segregation by sitting down and requesting service at a Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina.  Refused service, they kept returning, and  inspired a national movement as other black students across the South followed their example.

San Antonio’s Woolworth on Alamo Plaza was one of seven local stores that desegregated their lunch counters without sit-ins on March 16, 1960.  This peaceful and voluntary action made headlines at a time when other Southern cities responded to student protests with arrests and violence.

The Woolworth Building, an endangered Civil Rights landmark, is a World Monuments Fund 2020 Watch Site.

Watch Online – “San Antonio: Shining Example”

A visual chronology of the events that led up to San Antonio’s definitive moment in Civil Rights history on March 16, 1960.

This image is copyrighted.