Sit-ins reignited the civil rights movement 50 years ago By
Larry Copeland, USA TODAY NASHVILLE Fifth Avenue downtown
bustles with activity on a blustery recent afternoon. People of
all races mingle: This could be any midsize city in the United
States, circa 2010. Fifty years ago, things were different. The
stores along Fifth — specifically, their lunch counters — and
the city itself were the site of a battle that also played out
in dozens of other cities in the South. The fight pitted black
college students and a few of their white peers against the
city's white power structure and its downtown merchants over the
right to sit down and eat lunch. At the time, blacks could spend
money in those stores but couldn't eat at the stores' lunch
counters. The lunch counter of 1960 was the equivalent of fast-
food restaurants today. Hamburger chains were just beginning to
appear on the American landscape. Ray Kroc had opened his first
McDonald's about five years earlier; Burger King had gone
national just the year befor