lunch counter

noun

1. a counter, as in a store or restaurant, where light meals and snacks are served or are sold to be taken out.
2. a luncheonette.

Word History and Origins

Origin of lunch counter¹

First recorded in 1865–70

Example Sentences

Paschke sat at the packed lunch counter on a recent afternoon, waiting to pay.

From Los Angeles Times

James M. Lawson Jr., a Methodist minister who became the teacher of the civil rights movement, training hundreds of youthful protesters in nonviolent tactics that made the Nashville lunch counter sit-ins a model for fighting racial inequality in the 1960s, has died.

From Los Angeles Times

Lawson was a pivotal figure in some of the most important campaigns of the movement, including the Nashville lunch counter sit-ins, the first Freedom Ride and the social justice battles he led as pastor of Holman United Methodist Church in L.A.

From Los Angeles Times

He showed the students how to run an orderly sit-in by filling lunch counter seats in shifts.

From Los Angeles Times

Students staged a now-legendary 1960 sit-in at a segregated lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, starting a movement that eventually spread across the South, mobilizing young Black people and their white allies against Jim Crow and demonstrating the power students held.

From Salon