lunch counters

Lunch counters are long service counters where customers sit on stools to eat quick, simple meals—typically in diners, drugstores, or five-and-dime stores.

The format flourished in mid-twentieth-century America.

Lunch counters became historically significant during the civil rights movement, when Black activists staged sit-ins at segregated counters to protest discrimination: the Greensboro lunch counter sit-ins of 1960.