clipped from www.nytimes.com Op-Ed Contributor The Counter Revolution By HOWELL RAINES Henryville, Pa. IN the pre-digital America of 1960, “viral” was still a medical term. So it was written in countless news articles that the student sit-in movement had “spread like wildfire” on black campuses across the South. On the morning of Feb. 1, 50 years ago today, four black freshmen at North Carolina A&T State University seated themselves at the all-white lunch counter in a Woolworth’s dime store in Greensboro. Within hours, news of this bold act by the Greensboro Four, as they would come to be called, had grapevined its way from A&T to the campuses of historically black colleges in Atlanta and Nashville. All Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair Jr., David Richmond and Joe McNeil did was ask for coffee and doughnuts and politely decline to move until they were served