Laurel, MD, April 9 or so 1962 -- continued

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The busses (there were more than one) from Howard stopped at the University of Maryland to join up with students from there for what seemed like a long time. Then we all started up for Laurel. The leaders of NAG (Oh! I recently found out that the late Kwame Ture, in those says Stokely Carmichael, was active in civil rights at Howard about that time. I wonder if I ran into him when I met the NAG leadership) had chosen that day and place for a sit-in because it was the first day of the horse racing season at the track in Laurel. Lots of people would be in the eating places there and would see us.

The idea was simple. We weren't going to break any laws, but we were going to do our best to make segregation painful for the restaurant owners. The NAG leaders split us into groups of about four, two Howard students and two U MD students (or what amounts to the same thing, two black kids and two white kids) and sent each group into a restaurant to sit down and see if we would be served. We didn't expect to be. I was with a guy from U MD and two Howard women, Ann Wooten and Muriel Tolliver (Tagliaferro?).

As we walked to our first assigned eatery, we joked. What if they did take our order? Did we really want anything to eat or drink that early in the day? Had we brought enough money?

Hold on a sec. I bet you're picturing McDonalds and Burger King, or maybe a place with lots of exposed brick, grilled veggies, and seven varieties of coffee listed on a greaseboard. No no no. Check the date again. Think retro, but in its native habitat. Think 50's diners. Think chrome and formica and stools that spin around. Think glass fronted cases with pies. Did you watch Twin Peaks? Think of that diner, but without pies that good. At least I hope they weren't that good, because I didn't get any.

The four of us sat at a table for a long time without anyone waiting on us. Finally I found out what segregation meant, and what “being read out of a restaurant” meant in Maryland. The restaurant owner, backed up by two cops, came over to our table. He looked at a piece of paper and proceeded to read us a statement that I can't quote verbatim any more, but that was as fixed in form as the Miranda rights statement. Someone who's a scholar of Maryland law, please tell me how it went and I'll correct this. To the best of my memory: “I am the owner of this establishment. I am hereby asking you to leave my premises. I do this out of my own free will. If you remain or return you may be arrested.”

“OK,” we said. We picked up our hats and coats and left. Another group of kids came in to take our place, and we went to our next assigned eating place.

Or, of course, I should say, waiting place. We were a little more ready for lunch at our second stop, but not really hungry yet. There was another long wait, and then the same statement read by the owner.

By the fourth restaurant we were hungry and thirsty. We were also pretty well acquainted, having sat and chatted for as long as we would have if we had had lunch together four times, and beginning to think of ourselves more as friends who were trying to have lunch than as civil rights demonstrators. What was their problem with our being friends who wanted to sit down and eat? Whatever we thought of ourselves, the restaurant owners saw us as interlopers who were trying to destroy their way of life. We hoped we were enough of a nuisance to cut down on their business for the day. After all, if they had been willing to serve us they would have had paying customers at our table instead of people taking up valuable space.

If you haven't figured it out for yourself, it took a lot of cops to back up all the restaurant owners and managers who were spending their day reading demonstrators out of their establishments. Laurel was crawling with police cars and policemen. We thought that if anyone had wanted to rob a bank in Maryland, that would have been the day to do it. It seemed that all the police in the state must have been busy making sure that black and white college kids couldn't have lunch together.

Being read out of four restaurants took up the whole middle of the day. Lunch hour was over and we were hungry and by now angry, but nobody had been beaten or arrested. We were plenty angry. We were nonviolent, but on the bus back we agreed that if someone happened to go through Laurel with a tank and level all the places we had been read out of, we wouldn't cry.

Ok, there you have 50% of my participation in the civil rights movement. It was a relatively quiet, uneventful demonstration. I was one person out of six or eight bus loads of kids, just one of the troops. But it was the closest I've been to being part of history, and I wanted to tell you about it.

Oh, and that day wasn't over yet.