How One Woman Helped End Lunch Counter Segregation in the Nation’s Capital

"Tompson’s restaurant once served up fast, cheap meals—everything from smoked boiled tongue to cold salmon sandwiches. Today, there’s nothing in downtown D.C. to show that the then-popular restaurant chain even had a location at 725 14th Street Northwest in the 1950s. The space is now filled by a CVS drug store. Across the street, there’s an upscale barbershop, and on the corner at the intersection of 14th and New York Avenue, a Starbucks is currently under construction.
 

Just as the establishment quietly faded into history, so did the little-remembered Supreme Court case that began there. The case, 63 years ago this week, forced an end to lunch counter segregation in Washington, one year before Plessy v. Ferguson was repealed.

On February 28, 1950, 86-year-old Mary Church Terrell invited her friends Reverend Arthur F. Elmes, Essie Thompson and David Scull to lunch with her at Thompson’s. Only Scull was white, and when the four entered the establishment, took their trays and proceeded down the counter line, the manager told the group that Thompson’s policy forbid him from serving African Americans. The group asked again and again why they could not have lunch in the cafeteria, and the manager responded that it was not his personal policy, but Thompson Co.’s, and refused to serve them..."
Mary Church Terrell