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. Significantly, the integration of public accommodations of that city and many cities followed. Belles of Liberty: Gender, Bennett College and the Civil Rights Movement recalls a more complete story, illuminating what historians overlooked: that the first Sit-in in Greensboro was carefully planned on Bennett College’s campus, and without hundreds of women who sat down, marched and were incarcerated from 1960 to 1963, the Sit-in effort and subsequent desegregation of Greensboro and even other cities, might not have succeeded.