Four African-American students stage sit-in at segregated lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, on February 1. Sit-in movement spreads rapidly, and by the end of the month 31 lunch counter sit-ins are held in North Carolina, Maryland, Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Texas, resulting in hundreds of arrests.

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is founded at conference organized by Ella Baker, executive director of the SCLC, and held in Raleigh, North Carolina, April 15ý17.

Civil rights act is passed by Congress, April 21, providing criminal penalties for forcibly obstructing federal court orders and allowing federal courts to appoint referees to register voters in cases where a pattern or practice of voting discrimination has been proven at trial.

John F. Kennedy narrowly defeats Richard M. Nixon in presidential election on November 8 with crucial support from African-American voters in key states of Illinois and Texas.

Supreme Court rules 7ý2 in Boynton v. Virginia, December 5, that segregation of facilities in interstate bus terminals violates the Interstate Commerce Act.

Albert L. Rozier Jr., a student at North Carolina A. & T., reports on the sit-in movement in a special edition of The Register, the student newspaper. Albert L. Rozier Jr., "Students Hit Woolworth's for Lunch Service."

November: A cross is burned on the lawn of Hazel Brannon Smith, editor of the Lexington Advertiser (Lexington, Mississippi).

David Halberstam reports on the arrival of the sit-in movement in Nashville.

The Negro, according to the Southern myth, is content. Even the young ones. The myth has exploded with the sit-ins. For a week I have watched the Negroes at their meetings, watched them growing more determined and confident all the time, surprised by their own strength. On the Saturday when eighty were arrested, they came in waves: the police would arrest the first wave, expecting to put a stop to it, and then came the second wave, and then the third .... While the first eighty were being tried in city court, hundreds of other Negroes gathered at the First Baptist Church to plan further strategy. What if the students at Tennessee State were expelled for their part in the sit-ins? "Then we'll close the school," said Willie Stewart, one of the leaders. "We'll all go out together. If we all stick together they can't stop us no matter what is handed down from whom."

—"A Good City Gone Ugly," The Reporter, March 31, 1960.