Franklin McCain, one of the Greensboro Four, whose sit-in at a Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina helped catalyze the civil rights movement, has died at the age of 73. The group of four African-American college students sat down at the whites-only counter in on February 1, 1960, and refused to leave. The next day, they returned. Within days, 300 people were taking part. The sit-in helped spark a wave of similar actions across the segregated South. Today, two other members of the Greensboro Four are still alive; a third, David Richmond, died in 1990. This is Franklin McCain in a tribute video produced by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.

Franklin McCain: “I’m talking to you, the youth. I’m saying to you, all you have to do is believe, all you have to do is have a dose of commitment, throw yourself to the wind, forget about caution, and in the words of Eric Hoffer, the stevedore, become the true believer. And my parting words are to you, if you want to do something, don’t wait for the masses, because they ain’t coming!”

McCain died Thursday of respiratory complications at a hospital just a few miles from the old Woolworth, which is now a civil rights museum.