This information is shared from lynchburgvirginia.org website BLACK HISTORY IN LYNCHBURG VA …MIRIAM GAINES Civil Rights in Central Virginia: Lynchburg residents took a stand by sitting down. The hour was late on Dec. 15, 1960, when 18-year-old Miriam Gaines walked into a downtown drug store and dared to do something she’d never done before — sit down. Gaines, a black student from Campbell County High School, claimed a stool at the whites-only lunch counter of People’s Drug Store, perching alongs