Fifty years ago Monday, McCain and three other freshmen at North Carolina A&T University took a stand by sitting at the lunch counter in the national chain's Greensboro, North Carolina, store.

The store had no qualms selling toothpaste or light bulbs to blacks, but a cup of coffee at the lunch counter? Out of the question. The Greensboro Four, as they came to be known, were fed up.

McCain, Joseph McNeil, Ezell Blair Jr. and David Richmond were refused service February 1, 1960, but they sat their ground.

The Greensboro Four's act of civil defiance will be commemorated Monday with the grand opening of the International Civil Rights Center and Museum in Greensboro. Three members of the Greensboro Four will attend the ceremony without their companion Richmond, who died in 1990 at age 49.

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