<P> In July 1958, the NAACP Youth Council sponsored sit - ins at the lunch counter of a Dockum Drug Store in downtown Wichita, Kansas . After three weeks, the movement successfully got the store to change its policy of segregated seating, and soon afterward all Dockum stores in Kansas were desegregated . This movement was quickly followed in the same year by a student sit - in at a Katz Drug Store in Oklahoma City led by Clara Luper, which also was successful . </P> <P> Mostly black students from area colleges led a sit - in at a Woolworth's store in Greensboro, North Carolina . On February 1, 1960, four students, Ezell A. Blair Jr., David Richmond, Joseph McNeil, and Franklin McCain from North Carolina Agricultural & Technical College, an all - black college, sat down at the segregated lunch counter to protest Woolworth's policy of excluding African Americans from being served food there . The four students purchased small items in other parts of the store and kept their receipts, then sat down at the lunch counter and asked to be served . After being denied service, they produced their receipts and asked why their money was good everywhere else at the store, but not at the lunch counter . </P> <P> The protesters had been encouraged to dress professionally, to sit quietly, and to occupy every other stool so that potential white sympathizers could join in . The Greensboro sit - in was quickly followed by other sit - ins in Richmond, Virginia; Nashville, Tennessee; and Atlanta, Georgia . The most immediately effective of these was in Nashville, where hundreds of well organized and highly disciplined college students conducted sit - ins in coordination with a boycott campaign . As students across the south began to "sit - in" at the lunch counters of local stores, police and other officials sometimes used brutal force to physically escort the demonstrators from the lunch facilities . </P> <P> The "sit - in" technique was not new--as far back as 1939, African - American attorney Samuel Wilbert Tucker organized a sit - in at the then - segregated Alexandria, Virginia, library . In 1960 the technique succeeded in bringing national attention to the movement . On March 9, 1960, an Atlanta University Center group of students released An Appeal for Human Rights as a full page advertisement in newspapers, including the Atlanta Constitution, Atlanta Journal, and Atlanta Daily World . Known as the Committee on Appeal for Human Rights (COAHR), the group initiated the Atlanta Student Movement and began to lead sit - ins starting on March 15, 1960 . By the end of 1960, the process of sit - ins had spread to every southern and border state, and even to facilities in Nevada, Illinois, and Ohio that discriminated against blacks . </P>

Who was involved in the civil right movement