Open to All: The Fight to Desegregate St. Louis Restaurants

One of the documents preserved in the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri Records at the Washington University Libraries is this simple black and white mimeographed sheet produced by CORE (Committee of Racial Equality) volunteers working in St. Louis.

The page lists “places to eat-facilities open to all”—restaurants, coffee shops, snack bars, and cafeterias in St. Louis city and county where African Americans would not be refused service. CORE created this list by surveying locations that maintained a policy of admitting people regardless of skin color and then confirming the policy through “test” visits to the locations by (both black and white) volunteers.

An easier-to-read, typed list of the eateries can be found below.

What Can We Learn from This Sheet of Paper?

A lot. This single page offers a wealth of information and insight into our community’s efforts to fight against racial division.

There is, of course, the factual data—the names and locations where African Americans in St. Louis could purchase a meal. Many also include addresses, so with contemporary GIS technology, we could map these locations and look at this history through the lens of geography. It could also be compared with locations where LGBTQ St. Louisans were welcomed, as outlined on the Mapping LGBTQ St. Louis site

This sheet of paper also offers an example of the complex efforts enacted toward reducing racial discrimination. Civil rights history is so much more than the visible marches, mass meetings, and national legislation typically surveyed in US History class (as Julian Bond quipped, “Rosa sat down, Martin stood up, and the white kids came down and saved the day.”).

In this document, we see that it was economic—as CORE encouraged patronage of restaurants that were doing the right thing—and that it was interwoven among many groups of people, not just college activists or radical fringe groups. We also see that it was not a single story across the nation. The methods of CORE in St. Louis were quite different from those of college students in Greensboro, North Carolina. (If you are interested in reading more about the overlooked activist history of St. Louis check out this newly published title, The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States).

Places to Eat

What follows is a copy of the listing prepared by CORE volunteers in St. Louis and distributed in January 1961. Headings and facilities listed are as on the original document, with minor emphases and clarifications in wording added in italics. Links were added to provide more context about the facility in general, not necessarily about its history with racial integration.

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ACLU-MO @ 100

This post is part of a series in recognition of the American Civil Liberty Union of Missouri’s centennial year (1920-2020). Read more stories at: ACLU-MO @ 100 in Our News

If you have a question about this post or other topics related to St. Louis history, I can be reached at mrectenwald@wustl.edu or on Twitter @mrectenwald.