A piece of the actual Woolworth’s lunch counter from Greensboro has a place at the National Museum of American History, in Washington, DC.

When I visited this past August, the Smithsonian was running a simulation of the nonviolence training sessions that activists conducted to prepare people for high risk activism.  (It was great.)  Such training sessions are typical for groups staging direct action campaigns.  They want to build courage, community, and discipline.

I saw people sporting tee-shirts from the Glenn Beck demonstration, and wondered about their responses to this kind of activism, to say nothing of the long history of campaigns for racial justice in America.