The New Orleans sit-in that changed Canal Street

The big picture: The new Louisiana Civil Rights Trail marker is at the site of the former McCrory's five and dime store where a group of New Orleans students, known as the "CORE Four," sat at a whites-only lunch counter in 1960 and requested service.

• The students were Rudy Lombard of Xavier University, Oretha Castle Haley of SUNO, Cecil J. Carter of Dillard University and Sydney Goldfinch, a white student attending Tulane University, according to The New Orleans Tribune.
• They were arrested and convicted of criminal mischief.
• The U.S. Supreme Court overturned their convictions in 1963.

Zoom in: After the students' arrest, activists spent two years picketing 75 stores on Canal Street, demanding that they integrate, according to information from the National Civil Rights Trail, which includes the Canal Street location.

• The activists also wanted the merchants to hire 90 Black employees.
• The boycott lasted 735 days.

Zoom out: The city also has a historic marker for Homer Plessy, who was arrested this week in 1892 after boarding a "whites-only" New Orleans train car in an effort to abolish a Jim Crow law that mandated segregated railroad cars.

• His case led to the Supreme Court's decision of "separate but equal."

• In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that the notion of "separate but equal" was unconstitutional.
• Former Gov. John Bel Edwards posthumously pardoned Plessy in 2022.

State of play: The Louisiana Civil Rights Trail started two years ago and is supported in part by an African American civil rights grant from the Historic Preservation Fund administered by the National Park Service.

• See the locations.
• The state also has the African-American Heritage Trail.

What's next: The new marker will be unveiled at 3pm at 1001 Canal Street, which is now home to the Ruby Slipper Café.

Go deeper: Oral history from CORE members