In the late afternoon of Monday, February 1, 1960, four black freshmen entered the Woolworths store. As always, they browsed the store’s products, went to the cash register, and bought the daily necessities: toothpaste, notebooks, and hairbrushes. Stores like Woolworths have almost everything and everyone shops there. So this is not a unique story. But these four young men had a goal in mind. They put their shopping receipts in their jacket pockets and went to their main goal with beating hearts.

All four of them could feel the invisible dividing line between the shopping area and the dining counter. Blacks were not allowed to sit at the diner counter, and all blacks in the South knew that crossing that line could lead to arrest, beatings, or even murder. These four people were the same age as Emmit Till at the time of his murder. Five years earlier, this fourteen-year-old boy had been brutally tortured and killed by the Klan in Mississippi for allegedly proposing to date a white woman. These four people were angry but determined and calm.