Greensboro

Greensboro is a city in the Piedmont of North Carolina, at the center of the region known as the Piedmont Triad. On the first day of February in 1960, four students sat down at a whites-only Woolworth lunch counter downtown and began the sit-in movement for civil rights.

The town was laid out in 1808 as the seat of Guilford County and named after Nathanael Greene, a general of the American Revolution. Railroads arrived in the mid-19th century, and textile mills grew around them, with Cone Mills making denim at its White Oak plant for most of the 20th century. Lunsford Richardson, a pharmacist in the city, created the ointment Vicks VapoRub and named it after his brother-in-law Joshua Vick. The writer O. Henry, born William Sydney Porter, grew up in Greensboro and worked in his uncle's drugstore before he left for Texas.

Honda Aircraft Company builds the HondaJet business jet at its plant beside Piedmont Triad International Airport. Volvo Trucks North America has its head office in Greensboro. Kontoor Brands, based in the city, owns the Wrangler and Lee jeans brands.

The International Civil Rights Center and Museum opened in the old Woolworth building, with the original lunch counter kept in place. North Carolina A&T State University, where the four students of the sit-in studied, is a historically black university known for its engineering programs. The Greensboro Science Center combines a zoo, an aquarium and a treetop adventure park. Blandwood, the Italianate villa of the governor John Motley Morehead, was finished in the 1840s and is kept as a museum.