Greensboro Four Member Franklin McCain Dies

Renowned African American civil rights leader Franklin McCain has died. He was 73.

McCain was a member of the Greensboro Four, a group of North Carolina A&T State University students who sparked the "sit-in" movement when they refused to get up from a "whites-only" counter at a Greensboro, North Carolina Woolworth's in February 1960.

McCain's family says he died on Thursday of respiratory complications.

Following the Greensboro Four's protest, sit-ins were launched in dozens of cities to end race segregation in the United States. Demonstrations from sit-ins to marches in the 1960s helped pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act that outlawed discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin.