![]() ![]() They were confronted by up to 300 residents organized by the American Nazi Party and several arrests by police, including Henry. On June 9th a small interracial group began a sit in at a People’s Drug Store and quickly spread to other restaurants and lunch counters in that city. Henry agreed and moved NAG’s first sit-in to Arlington, Virginia. He first targeted Alexandria, Va., which responded by agreeing to undertake a quick desegregation study composed of black leaders and white businesses in return for a postponement of demonstrations. Instead Henry decided to emulate the Greensboro sit-ins. Laurence Henry (right) arrested at a sit-in at Howard Johnson in Arlington, Virginia Jduring the desegregation campaign. The picket line was completely ignored and Henry concluded that picketing targets like the Capitol and the White House were a “waste of time,” according to the Washington Post. Laurence Henry led a small group of Howard students who were joined by students from other area colleges to picket the Capitol in March 1960 demanding movement on a federal civil rights bill. The organization was named the Nonviolent Action Group (NAG). However, the use of the tactic exploded when four African American students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University began a movement when they staged a sit-in at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina on February 1, 1960.Īt the same time, a 25-year old divinity student was forming a group dedicated to civil rights action at Howard University. The sit-in tactic was utilized at the Alexandria, Virginia public library in 1939, but the approach was not adopted on a widespread basis either in the Washington, D.C. Picket lines and court cases largely de-segregated public facilities within the District of Columbia during the 1940s and 50s, but the suburbs remained bastions of segregation. District of Columbia residents also employed a wide range of methods in a fight against police brutality 1938-41. The boycott was introduced during the 1930s in a campaign to force those doing business in the black community to hire African Americans. during the Scottsboro campaign in 1932 when communists staged a prohibited march on the Supreme Court. The tactic of civil disobedience for civil rights was introduced in Washington, D.C. The nascent civil rights movement in the Washington area tried a number of tactics to fight the renewed denial of the rights of African Americans ranging from protests against lynching to armed self-defense during the Washington “riot” of 1919.Īn unauthorized march to “Free the Scottsboro Boys” at the Supreme Court in 1932 introduces civil disobedience to the early rights movement. The park didn’t fare well featuring performing arts and converted to an amusement park in the early twentieth century.Īt the time Glen Echo opened, the reversal of African American gains during the Reconstruction period was at its peak and both terror and new segregationist laws were enforcing Jim Crow. Streetcar service to Glen Echo began the same year. The storied Glen Echo Amusement Park opened in 1891 as a segregated facility featuring concerts and other arts performances. The successful attempt, in turn, sowed some of the seeds of the black power movement later in the decade. Lost in the re-telling of the story is how some white participants worked to depose the black leader of NAG in the middle of the Glen Echo fight and replace him with one more palatable to the Kennedy-Johnson presidential ticket that opposed enacting national legislation on civil rights. It was a resounding victory all the way around–both in the social forces involved and the outcome. Such use of a state agent to enforce segregation was illegal, the Supreme Court ruled in 1964. The effort involved harassment and arrests and resulted in a precedent setting court case establishing that an off-duty sheriff deputy employed as a park guard conducting the arrests at the behest of the park owners was in fact an agent of the state. Together they sustained the picket lines through the summer heat in the face of American Nazi Party counter demonstrators until the owners gave in and finally desegregated the facility the following spring. The neighboring residents of the overwhelmingly white and majority Jewish community of Bannockburn joined them. ![]() ![]() The story of the effort to end segregation at Glen Echo Amusement Park in Montgomery County, Maryland 55 years ago is an inspiring one that continues to be celebrated today.Ī mixed group of black and white college students from the local Nonviolent Action Group (NAG) began picketing the facility in June 1960 calling for an end to the privately owned park’s policy of barring African Americans. Protesters demand Glen Echo admit African Americans in 1960. ![]()
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