Open Accommodations Mass Protests

610 South 4th Street

Until the 1960s, most white-owned food and retail establishments downtown barred African Americans from entry or gave them unequal service. As part of a wave of nonviolent sit-ins across the South that began a new genera-tion of mass activism in 1960, African American teens launched a sit-in campaign here in Feb. 1961. More than 700 arrests and 2 years of protests—including a “Nothing New for Easter” boycott that cost merchants thousands of dollars—led 200+ businesses to desegregate. Using their votes as a bloc, blacks ousted many on the city’s Board of Aldermen after it twice rejected an ordinance forbidding discrimination by race in public accommodations. The open accommodations law passed in 1963—1st one south of the Mason-Dixon. Newer and more artistic markers further north on Fourth Street show some of the specific sires of the sit-ins.

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Over 700 arrests and two years of protests and boycots led 200+ businesses to desegregate.