HIST 3090 Oct.
31, 2005
Szuying Wu
Hotel Desegregation Movement in Atlanta Area in 1960s
The desegregation movement had
been a huge event and impact in Atlanta
area in 1960s, especially after the Civil Right Acts of 1964 had announced in
1963. During that time, there were many protests
and arguments about segregation had occurred and revealed, most of them were
focusing on the public accommodations, such as restaurant, hotel, theater, and transportation,
especially restaurant and hotel were the most difficult facilities to negotiate
the agreement of desegregation. During
the process of hotel desegregation, one most important event that had impacted
the Atlanta area was the legal
suit, Atlanta Motel v. United States. It challenged the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and
influenced Atlanta area’s hotel desegregation
process and made a huge movement during that time. The case had pulled out many discussions and opinions,
and also brought up many public accommodations to pay attention on the
desegregation issues. By seeing through
the Atlanta Motel case, it could find out more information about how most
public accommodations in Atlanta area
faced and dealt with the Civil Rights Act movement during 1960s.
Before talking about the
desegregation process, one most important thing need to be discussed here is
the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Civil
Rights Act of 1964 had originally been introduced by President John F. Kennedy
in June 1963. He made an announcement
that nation had faced a “moral crisis” as a result of the “rising tide” of
Negro discontented that threatens public safety in every American city. He also promised to send to Congress sweeping
legislation that would prohibit most public accommodations from discriminating
against Negroes; allow the federal government to take more action for aiming at
desegregation public schools; and would allow Negroes to take advantage of
their right to vote. On June 19, 1963, President Kennedy
attached a proposed bill in a message to Congress and included the statement of
“to promote the general welfare by eliminating discrimination based on race,
color, religion, or national origin in ….”
On July 2, 1964, the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 was officially passed upon the recommendation of
President Johnson.[1]
Before the Civil Rights Act had
been legislated by Congress, Atlanta
could be seen as one major racially segregated city, and was also one racial
residential segregation city with long-term segregation process after racial
segregation in the United States
had been raised during the years after the end of Reconstruction in the
1870s. The segregated communities had
developed in the late 19th century, and the first segregation law
used various plans to limit black movement into white areas had enacted in
1913. During the time, Atlanta was
divided into white and black zones for different usage of dwelling sections,
apartment-house area, and commercial and industrial districts; it is no doubt
that the city was trying to be a major race-based policies city.[2]
The segregation laws in Atlanta
had separated white and black for a long time period, therefore, it certainly
needed to take a long time for white people in Atlanta
to accept the Civil Rights Act movement when it passed in 1964. According to a Federal Reserve Board study, “Atlanta
ranked among the 20 worst American cities in inequality in home loans to white
and minority neighborhoods.” Also, in
December 1963, Dr. King had made an announcement about that Atlanta had fallen
behind almost every other major Southern city in progress toward desegregation,
and most Negroes were disappointed with Atlanta had allowed itself to fall
behind. They felt that the progress had
been made in some areas, but it should try harder for making Atlanta
a truly free and open city for all of the citizens. During that time, most white people in Atlanta
city were still refused and resisted to desegregate the pubic accommodations,
until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had been established.[3]
Although Atlanta
had been one of major segregation cities in the early of 1960s, there were
still few desegregation movements had been made slowly. Many African American citizens began to
challenge city’s racial segregation rules by actions of boycotts, sit-ins, and
other forms of nonviolent movements during the 1950s, and more and more Civil
Rights movements had begun and started to influence the Atlanta city. Such as “Forward Atlanta Campaign” had made
some business leaders recognized that a good reputation in race relations was
helpful in attracting new industries, and the white leadership of Atlanta
realized that some changes were inevitable, thus they believed that the racial
reform would help the economic growth. Some
other movements of desegregation also had been processed in peace gradually
during 1950s to 1960s, such libraries, schools, churches hospitals, city buses,
golf courses, and parks. Most of the
African American leaders had tried very hard to protest and negotiate with many
facilities for their own liberties. [4]
However, even there were the
civil rights groups had tried to negotiate desegregation agreements between the
owners of the city’s facilities of public accommodation, there were still some
limitation of progress toward desegregation, the majority of restaurants and
hotels still maintained a policy of segregation. When the Civil Rights Acts became law, a
restaurant’s owner, Lester Maddox, pledged that his restaurant would never desegregate,
and announced that, “I’ll do just as I have in the past—throw the Negroes out—if
it falls my due to go to jail,” which shows their insistence of refusing to
accept the desegregation for the public accommodations. Due to the restaurant and hotel owners’
reaction, desegregation of downtown restaurants, hotels and motels thus had
been Mayor Allen’s hardest goal to achieve.
In 1963, the mayor of Atlanta,
Ivan Allen, said that “Atlanta had
made strides during the first three years of the sixties, but the battle lines had
been drawn quite clearly at the restaurants and the hotel. Everything I had tried in those areas had
failed.”[5]
In 1963, under the city officials
or the convention bureau’s request, few hotels agreed to accept visiting
African American dignitaries and black convention delegates, and some major
downtown hotels and restaurants arranged biracial luncheons and meetings, but most
hotels still insisted to maintain a policy of segregation in their eating
facilities, due to their revenues from eating facilities were dependent on
local owners who claimed it was necessary to hold on to custom and tradition. In the summer of 1963, African American
students protested at segregated hotels and restaurant, after protests, African
American leaders and Mayor Allen negotiated with hotels and restaurants’
owners. However, owners of hotels and
restaurants still insisted to maintain segregation and emphasized their
property rights, and they also claimed that owners had rights to choose their
customers and clients. In the negotiations
with those owners, African American leaders felt that no establishment wanted
to “take the first step”, and restaurants owners were waiting to see if hotels
first opened their eating facilities to African Americans.[6]
In May 1963, The Atlanta Chamber
of Commerce announced a “policy declaration” for urging all businesses to
desegregate in order to maintain a peaceful racial environment. Thus, some good results came out in the same
year in June, Mayor Allen made an announcement that 14 of Atlanta’s
leading hotels and motels voluntarily agreed to desegregate their facilities to
the extent of accepting “conventions with a limited number of Negro delegates.” In the January 10th 1964, Mayor Allen met with 35 hotel and
motel owners for seeking the voluntary desegregation of the city’s public
accommodations. Following the meeting, the
14 major hotels and motels had announced the first public agreement on January
11th, to accept reservations regardless of race in agreement with
usual hotel practices. Few days after
the announcement, two more big motels, Holiday Inns and Piedmont Avenue, had
joined and brought the total to 16 desegregated hotels. Those
actions had been expected to affect Atlanta’s
convention business, and also made a huge forward for desegregation movement in
Atlanta city.[7]
In contrast to
the desegregation pledged by those 16 motels and hotels, there were still some
other source of resistance to the public accommodations; one of them was the
Heart of Atlanta Motel. The motel had
been built in 1956 by Allen Glover Webb and Moreton Rolleston Jr., and also had
been refused to accommodate Negroes since it opened. When 14 of the leading Atlanta
hotels agreed in 1963 to desegregate, the Heart of Atlanta Motel declined to
join the agreement, thus, the motel had been the protest target by Negro and
white civil rights workers. One of the motel’s
owners, Moreton Rolleston, who was a practicing attorney, and also a strict
segregationist, had begun preparing a constitutional challenge of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964 after the President Kennedy attached a proposed bill in a
message to Congress. On July 2nd 1965, after
President Johnson signed the civil rights act into law at 6:45 p.m., Rolleston was filed with the federal court
clerk immediately at 8:55 p.m., and the Heart of Atlanta Motel suit
therefore became the first court test of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.[8]
The Heart of
Atlanta Motel case asked for $11 million in damage and argued that the
desegregation law was unconstitutional as applied to the Heart of Atlanta Motel
and would ruin his motel business, reputation and goodwill. Mr. Rolleston said the law violated the Fifth
Amendment of the Constitution because the Government was now allowed “to take
for pubic use part of the rights of the motel in and to its private property
without any compensation.” He contended
that the law exceeded the constitutional authority of Congress to regulate the
foreign and interstate commerce into a motel business, and also argued that his
motel is “local” rather than “interstate commerce” by saying “so essentially
local in character as to be outside the stream of interstate commerce.”[9]
The federal
court set July 17th as the date for a hearing of Heart of Atlanta
Motel case. In July 22nd, the
court ordered the Atlanta
restaurant and a motel to serve Negroes within 20 days, and dismissed Rolleston’s
claim for $11 million in damages against the government. The court ruled that racial discrimination in
hotels and motels could truly be prohibited by Congress under the Commerce
Clause in order to remove the unfavorable affects such discrimination imposed
on commerce. The judges set August 11th
as the deadline for desegregating the restaurant and motel, and the judges also
allowing Rolleston to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court, Rolleston said
that they will obey the court order and immediately filed notice of appeal to
the Supreme Court. After Rolleston
appealed, the oral argument for the case scheduled on October 5, and the
decisions of the Supreme Court were publicly announced on December 14, 1964. The Supreme Court stated that the motel was
located on Courtland Street,
it was only two blocks from downtown Peachtree Street,
and strategically located near both Interstates highways 75 and 85 and state
highways 23 and 41; also, the motel’s 75% guests were from out of State, which proved
the motel clearly affected interstate commerce.
Therefore, it upheld the permanent injunction issued by the District
Court, and the Heart of Atlanta Motel would be required to receive business
from customers of all races.[10]
After Supreme Court’s
decision had been announced, Mr. Rolleston had totally accepted the decision
and stated that “This is the end of the line…I’ve gone as far as I can.” Afterward, the Heart of Atlanta Motel had
been operating on a desegregated basis on Court’s order, furthermore, the
president of the Atlanta Hotel Association pledged that the “hotel will obey
the law,” thus, most hotels and motels started to desegregate and follow the
court’s decision. The decision also made
many public accommodations in the South start to obey the law after Supreme
Court’s decision had been announced, in February 1965, the hotel and night-club
had opened for the Negroes tourists in Miami
area, too. Base on that information, it
probably could be assumed that the most hotels and motels in Atlanta
area had officially been desegregated after the law suit since some other areas
had started to consider about the importance of desegregation issues.[11]
The decision for Heart of Atlanta
Motel’s was a big impact for the whole nation, one Atlanta black attorney
Donald Hallowell, who was the leaders in the fight to desegregate Lester Maddox’s
Pickrick restaurant, another famous law suit of challenging Civil Rights Act of
1964, said that the Supreme Court’s decisions were “most important and
extremely gratifying. It is another step
toward effecting human dignity for all Americans.” Also, some scholars believed that the Civil
Right Act and the Heart of Atlanta Motel case contributed to the growth of Atlanta’s
convention trade and business. The
result of the law suit was also the most important social change for the whole
nation, and it also brought the Atlanta
area forward to a different, new period.[12]
In the American’s history, the
process of desegregation movement probably was not really a long process
compare with other huge events in the past, however, it could probably be the
most difficult process for all of the Americans; both blacks and whites needed
to struggle for trying to fit in and accept each other’s society in their daily
lives. In Atlanta
area during 1960s, it had been a hard time and hard job for most people to
accept the desegregation movement, however, the city was doing a good job and
made a huge movement to accomplish the accommodation desegregation in a short
time period. The Mayor Young said in May
1985, “Over the last 20 years, we have accomplished the task of desegregation
in Atlanta…” Even the desegregation of hotel and motel in Atlanta
area had taken only twenty years to accomplish the mission; it still could be
seen that it was a huge and difficult step for the whole city. In reviewing the whole process, we could
notice that the most helpful step for the desegregation movement could be passing
the Civil Rights Act of 1964, however, by seeing through the Heart of Atlanta
Motel’s law suit for the movement, it could also make an assumption that
without Mr. Rolleston’s action of bringing on the law suit, the whole process of
hotel’s desegregation probably would take longer to achieve, and probably would
take more hard steps to make all of the hotels and motels to obey the law. In the other word, the action of challenging
the constitution law was a helpful achievement; it was also one important step that
made the whole nation make a huge step forward to the equality of human rights
period.[13]
[1] "Must
Avert Violence, Nation Told", Atlanta
Constitution, 12 June 1963,
p.1;
Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States,
379 U.S. 241
(1964).
[2]
Richard C. Cortner, Civil Rights and
Public Accommodations: The Heart of Atlanta Motel and McClung Cases (Lawrence,
KS: University Press of Kansas, 2001), ix;
Ronald
H. Bayor, Race and the Shaping of
Twentieth-Century Atlanta
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 54.
[3] Bayor,
53;
"Atlanta
Trailing Dixie Cities, King Tells Integration Rally," Atlanta Constitution, 16 December 1963, p. 1, 8.
[4]
David Andrew Harmon, Beneath the Image of
the Civil Rights Movement and Race Relations: Atlanta, Georgia, 1946-1981
(New York: Garland, 1996), 83
[7] Harmon,
152;
"14 Hotels
Accept Some Integration." Atlanta
Constitution, 21 June 1963,
p., 13;
"14
Hotels, Motels Desegregate Here." Atlanta
Constitution, 11 January 1964,
p.1, 5;
"2 More Big Motels
Desegregate Here." Atlanta
Constitution, 16 January 1964,
p.15.
[8] Cortner,
35;
"Rights
Law Illegal, Motel Says in Suit.” Atlanta
Constitution, 7 July 1964,
p. 3.
[9] Atlanta Constitution. 7 July 1964;
"Atlanta
Motel Sues in Major Test of Right Act." The New York Times, 7 July
1964, p. 1;
Cortner, 36
[10] "Civil
Rights Act Passes First Test In Federal Court." The New York Times, 23
July 1964. p.1;
"Federal
Court Orders Maddox And Motel to Serve Negroes." Atlanta Constitution. 23 July 1964. p.1, 19;
Cortner,
54, 171
Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States,
379 U.S. 241
(1964)
[11] Cortner,
182;
"Miami
Doors Open To Negro Tourists." The
New York Times, 7 February 1965.
p.73
[12] Corner,
182;
"Allen Webb, developer of
historic motel." The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, 5 March 1998. p. 10-C
[13] "Atlanta’s
Years of Progress Temper New Racial Disputes." The New York Times, 6 May
1985, p. 1-A