Belles of Liberty

The historic Greensboro, North Carolina lunch counter sit-In on February 1, 1960 is one of the most well known incidents in Civil Rights history. This singular event was universally credited to four young men from North Carolina A&T State University. The integration of public accommodations in Greensboro and many other cities followed.

Belles of Liberty: Gender, Bennett College, and the civil Rights Movement in Greensboro, North Carolina recalls a more complete story, illuminating what many historians have overlooked: that the first sit-In in Greensboro was carefully planned on Bennett College's campus; and without the women who sat down, marched, and were incarcerated in the hundreds from 1960 to 1963, the Sit-In effort and subsequent desegregation of Greensboro, might not have happened.