Four black college students from the North Carolina Agricultural
and Technical College staged the first of the Civil Rights
Movement’s sit-ins. The students sat down at a Woolworth’s lunch
counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, and attempted to order
but were refused service. The sit-in movement grew to more than
140 cities. Participants faced harassment, violence, and arrest
in their attempts to integrate public lunch counters. In Shelly
v. Kraemer, the Supreme Court reinforced the Fourteenth
Amendment’s guarantee of “equal protection of the laws" when it
ruled that state courts could not enforce racially restrictive
housing covenants. The Fair Housing Amendments Act of 1988
amended the Fair Housing Act of 1968 (which prohibited housing
discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national
origin). The 1988 law extended protections to families with
children and those with disabilities, and established harsher
penalties for violation. The National Organization for Women
(NOW) is an activist women’s