This post is part of a series on some of the most memorable companies that have disappeared.
On February 1, 1960, in Greensboro, North Carolina, four African-American students sat down at a segregated lunch counter in a Woolworth's store. That touched off a series of sit-ins and boycotts that spurred the U.S. civil-rights movement.
Founded in 1879 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, F.W. Woolworth stores were the epitome of the American five-and-dime discount retailers, and the company was one of the largest retail chains in the world through much of the 20th century.
By 1910 the company was successful enough to commission the Woolworth Building in New York City, the world's tallest skyscraper until the completion of the Chrysler Building in 1930.
Woolworth's became the model for many other five-and-dimes throughout the United States. Oddly enough, such discount stores were sometimes criticized for driving local merchants out of business, a charge that would later be leveled at big-box stores.
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