The New Year's Day March was the first large-scale civil rights protest in Greenville, and it occurred without any violence or arrests. Within a month of the march, students at Sterling High School would organize sit-ins at segregated lunch counters in the downtown area, inspired by the Greensboro sit-ins. By March of 1960, Jesse Jackson would successfully lead the Greenville Eight on a sit-in of the segregated library system. On July 1, 1961, Charles E. Daniel, a former U.S. Senator from South Carolina, unexpectedly admitted that the separation of races was a policy that needed to be changed: “The desegregation issue cannot continue to be hidden behind the door. This situation cannot be settled at the lunch counter and bus station levels. We must handle this ourselves, more realistically than heretofore" Furthermore, Governor Fritz Hollings' endeavor to integrate schools "with dignity" meant that South Carolina was often out of the national spotlight when desegregation began.