Civil Rights Museum could be selected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site

The International Civil Rights Center & Museum (ICRCM) of Greensboro is located downtown on Elm Street. The museum is being consideration as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, along with 14 other landmarks on the United States Civil Rights Trail.

The International Civil Rights Center & Museum (ICRCM) of Greensboro will be recommended for consideration as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, along with 14 other landmarks on the United States Civil Rights Trail.

Mayor William Bell of Birmingham, AL, publicly announced these recommendations on Tuesday, July 5. The museum commemorates the indelible mark made by four African American freshmen students at North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University. David Richmond, Jibreel Khazan, Franklin McClain and Joseph McNeil (the “A&T Four”), students at what was then the Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina, initiated a successful 1960 sit-in protest at the segregated “Whites only” lunch counter at F.W. Woolworth. Since the 1960s, the sit-ins strategy of non-violent civil disobedience to challenge oppression has been replicated in America and throughout the world. The “A&T Four’s” peaceful action to protest racially segregated public facility laws ignited the Sit-In Movement across the American South, changing the nation and the world.

On December 12, 2008, ICRCM received notification from the National Park Service that the historic landmark would be included on the National Registry of Historic Places.

The Park Service determined that the property contributes to the cultural and historical significance of the Downtown Greensboro Historic District.

The ICRCM opened on February 1, 2010. The museum commemorates the men and women whose courage hastened an end to the repressive regime of Jim Crow. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. described the Greensboro sit-in as one of the pivotal catalysts of the broader Civil Rights Movement. It was the Greensboro sit-ins that led to the desegregation of the Woolworth lunch counter and ultimately to the dismantling of the system of segregation in the United States. For that reason, it is the mission of the ICRCM to ensure the world never forgets the courage displayed by the “A&T Four”, along with the hundreds and thousands of college and community youth around the country who joined them in the days and weeks that followed.

Now in its seventh year of operation, the state-of-the-art interactive museum and education center is dedicated to helping children, students and adults of all races understand and appreciate the profound power of the Civil Rights Movement, the direct impact of the sit-ins, and the “A&T Four” themselves, along with the thousands who joined them in this landmark movement.