Google Kicks Off Black History Month With Greensboro, N.C., Sit-In Doodle by Compton Artist Karen Collins

As today officially marks the first day of what is regarded as Black History Month, tech giant Google is commemorating the occasion with a special Google Doodle honoring the 60th anniversary of the Greensboro, N.C., sit-in.

That doodle is of Jibreel Khazan (formerly Ezell Blair, Jr.), Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, and David Richmond, better known as the “Greensboro Four,” who on this day in 1960 protested racial segregation with a sit-in movement at Woolworth’s lunch counter located in downtown Greensboro, N.C.

The four young men were students at North Carolina A&T University and were fed up with the Jim Crow-driven bigotry that was running rampant throughout the land of the free and the home of the brave.

In defiance, they sat at the “white-only” lunch counter and refused to leave when they were denied service. Although these four young men were denied service, they sat at that counter until the store closed.

Protests over the incident ensued for several months until Woolworth’s was finally desegregated in July 1960.

The actions of the “Greensboro Four”—as they became known as—led to a sit-in movement across the South, forcing dining facilities across the region to integrate by the summer of 1960.

The design in the Google Doodle is the work of Karen Collins, a Compton, Calif.-based artist and founder of the African American Miniature Museum.

The Google Doodle is a photograph of the artist’s diorama that depicts the sit-in made.

“Creating art honoring the Greensboro sit-in (and the civil rights movement it was part of) is my way of giving back to today’s generation, especially to those who are in desperate times and troubles—to lift them up and teach them about their history,” Collins said of the work.

According to Google, the Greensboro sit-in has been searched more than any other sit-in in U.S. Google Trends history.