Free Press Flashback: Sit-ins were an early tactic at Detroit civil-rights protests

Sit-ins by civil rights activists became a well-known tactic across the South in the 1960s, but Black protesters in Detroit were using the strategy in the early 1950s.

Arthur Johnson, a longtime community leader, describes what it was like sitting in at Detroit establishments in an excerpt from his 2008 memoir, “Race and Remembrance,” published by the Wayne State University Press. Johnson served as executive secretary of the Detroit Branch NAACP and was a longtime official at WSU, among other posts. He died in 2011 at 85.

The excerpt below begins as the NAACP was mounting a campaign against First Federal Savings and Loan, which refused to hire Black tellers.   

A firsthand account

Led by our discrimination committee chairman Abe Ulmer, we picketed for five months, but it was the sit-ins that ultimately forced the bank to come to terms with our demands.

A group of us, including Abe’s wife, Trudy, would enter First Federal, sit down in the service line, and decline to move. The bank would call the police to remove us physically since we refused to get up and walk.

Our resistance was always peaceful, but the commotion inside and outside First Federal disrupted business and embarrassed the bank in the community. The sit-ins took a toll on us, both physically and financially, since we had to endure the arrests and defend ourselves in court. But we were determined to keep up the campaign for as long as it took.

Finally, the bank called in a mediator named Ron Haughton. We reached a settlement in which First Federal pledged to change its discriminatory practices. The bank agreed to hire and train Blacks as tellers and other financial jobs. The bank also agreed to end its practice of racial bias against Blacks seeking loans or mortgages.

Another issue we took on was the discrimination against Blacks at restaurants, bars and hotels.

The eating and entertainment venues downtown and along Woodward Avenue refused to serve Blacks. A few months after I arrived in Detroit, we set up a restaurant discrimination committee. The chair was Ernie Dillard. His wife, Jessie, also participated. We met every Friday at 6 p.m. at the Black YMCA downtown.

We would select the target of our sit-in demonstration for the evening and plot our strategy. The use of sit-ins as a protest tool was experimental, and our committee was one of the first in the country to try this tactic.

The law prohibited restaurants from racially discriminating, but restaurants in the city openly flouted the law. We entered the restaurant we chose and would wait to be served. Inevitably, an hour would go by without a waiter or any restaurant employee offering a menu or any service whatsoever.

Then, one of us would get up and ask for the manager or maître d’. We would politely explain to the person in charge that we had been waiting patiently for an hour and that no one had come by to take our order.

Invariably, the person would respond that the restaurant was “unable to serve us.” We would ask for a more detailed explanation, but in most cases, the person would simply reiterate the pat company line. Sometimes the person would ask what we wanted to order, and whatever we said would be met with, “Sorry, we don’t have that,” even though we could see other customers eating the same meals we requested.

Our sit-ins caused a measure of tension among the white patrons in the establishment, although there was not a single occasion in all of our protests when a patron took our side. The tension was part of our strategy. We wanted to be an embarrassment to the facility.

After the restaurant made it clear that we would not be served, we would leave and use a pay phone outside to call the police and ask that they come right away.

What we said to the police on the phone depended on the venue. For example, after our sit-in at the Stage Door Bar, an upscale cocktail lounge on Woodward, we told the dispatcher that a fight was about to break out. When the police arrived to speak to the management, we explained that the bar was in violation of the law because it refused to serve us.

The manager then claimed that he had denied us service because we had come to the bar intoxicated and must have had too much to drink at another establishment. We, of course, had not consumed any alcohol. But the manager knew that the law permits bars to refuse to serve customers who, in their own judgment, are drunk.

And we knew, going into this protest, that the bar would likely use this excuse to cover its illegal actions. The senior officer at the scene knew it was an excuse, but instead of confronting the manager, he asked us why we wanted to stay when it was evident that we were not wanted. I then politely argued with the officer that it was our right to be served and we wanted the law to be enforced.

The officer refused to act, but we had made our point. All of the discussions among the Stage Door management, the police and ourselves took place in open view of the patrons and disrupted normal activity at the establishment. It was the only way we could draw attention to the problem and fight this pattern of discrimination.

The restaurant discrimination committee met almost every week for a number of years. As a result, we visited almost every eating and entertainment venue in the city that practiced racial discrimination. We protested many establishments several times.

We staged sit-ins at the Arcadia rink, which refused to admit Blacks wanting to skate. We sat at the counter of the famous Brown Derby restaurant and asked for cups of coffee. The owner said he didn’t have any coffee even though there was a big pot brewing in front of us. So we continued to sit and wait. Eventually, the owner decided to close the place early for the night and lose business rather than serve us.

On a number of occasions, restaurant and bar owners took the extreme measure of shutting down for the night rather than dealing with us or the police, even though we all knew the police would not make the owners abide by the law. The establishments did not want to cope with unwanted attention and agitation.

After nearly two years of protests, some of the major eateries in the city finally began to serve Black customers. Meanwhile, the NAACP continued to pressure the major hotels in Detroit about their illegal discrimination practices.

These hotels refused to rent their social facilities to Blacks for private parties, meetings and other events. Blacks were also customarily denied the opportunity to rent a room for an overnight stay. We made it clear to the hotels that we would consider legal action if they did not change their policies to comply with the law.

Finally, in 1953, the Book Cadillac Hotel downtown allowed two major Black fraternities to hold their respective conclaves at the hotel. Though it was still a struggle, other hotels eventually followed suit.

Bill McGraw is a retired Free Press reporter and editor.