February 1 · This Day in America
Just after 4 p.m., four freshmen from North Carolina A&T walk into the Woolworth's in downtown Greensboro. They buy a few small things, keep the receipts, then sit at the whites-only lunch counter and ask for coffee. They are refused. They do not leave. Ezell Blair Jr., David Richmond, Franklin McCain, and Joseph McNeil stay in their seats, polite and unmoved, until the store closes around them. The next day they come back, and more come with them. Within days the counter is paralyzed; within weeks the sit-ins have spread to fifty-five cities in thirteen states. They did not throw a punch or raise a voice. They simply sat down and declined to accept that this was the way things had to be. A nation watched four teenagers be braver than its laws.
Source: www.ncpedia.org
Also on this day · 1978
The Postal Service issues a 13-cent stamp bearing the face of Harriet Tubman, the first in its Black Heritage series and the first time an African American woman appears on American postage. The woman who walked into slavery again and again to lead others out is now carried, by the millions, into every mailbox in the country. Her image travels the freedom routes one more time.
Source: postalmuseum.si.edu