Greensboro — a city with a population nearing 300,000 — is known as a place with historic gatherings.

In the final days of the Civil War, Jefferson Davis and his cabinet escaped from Danville, Va., and reassembled in Greensboro on April 11, 1865. After considering their options, they elected to separate, leaving the city as the final place the entire Confederate government met as a group.

On Feb. 1, 1960, four African-American students from nearby North Carolina A&T College entered the Greensboro Woolworth and made small purchases before taking seat at the store’s lunch counter. They produced receipts when they were denied service and refused to leave. That protest led to a hundreds of others to join the demonstration, which would last for months and lead to the desegregation of Woolworth’s and other chains.

The original lunch counter and stools where the four first sat are in their original location, now home to the International Civil Rights Center and Museum, which opened in 2010 for the 50th anniversary of the original sit-in.

The “Greensboro Four” — Joseph McNeil, Ezell Blair Jr., Franklin McCain and David Richmond — are also memorialized by a statue that sits on the campus of their alma mater.