Just Another Southern Town : Mary Church Terrell and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Nation's Capital

In January of 1950, Mary Church Terrell, an 86-year-old charter member of the NAACP, headed into Thompson's Restaurant, just a few blocks from the White House, and requested to be served. She and her companions were informed by the manager that they could not eat in his establishment, because they were "colored." Terrell, a former suffragette and one of the country's first college-educated African American women, took the matter to court. Three years later, the Supreme Court vindicated her outrage: __District of Columbia v. John R. Thompson Co., Inc.__ was decided in June 1953, invalidating the segregation of restaurants and cafes in the nation's capital. In __Just Another Southern Town__, Joan Quigley recounts an untold chapter of the civil rights movement: an epic battle to topple segregation in Washington, the symbolic home of American democracy. At the book's heart is the formidable Mary Church Terrell and the test case she mounts seeking to enforce Reconstruction-era laws prohibiting segregation in D.C. restaurants. Through the prism of Terrell's story, Quigley reassesses Washington's relationship to civil rights history, bringing to life a pivotal fight for equality that erupted five years before Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of a Montgomery bus and a decade before the student sit-in movement rocked segregated lunch counters across the South. At a time when most civil rights scholarship begins with __Brown v. Board of Education__, __Just Another Southern Town__ unearths the story of the nation's capital as an early flashpoint on race. A rich portrait of American politics and society in the mid-20th century, it interweaves Terrell's narrative with the courtroom drama of the case and the varied personalities of the justices who ultimately voted unanimously to prohibit segregated restaurants. Resonating with gestures of courage and indignation that radiate from the capital's streets and sidewalks to its marble-clad seats of power, this work restores Mary Church Terrell and the case that launched a crusade to their rightful place in the pantheon of civil rights history. "Throughout the late 1970s and early '80s, dozens of Japanese citizens were abducted from coastal Japanese towns by North Korean commandos. In what proved to be part of a global project, North Korea attempted to reeducate the abductees and train them to spy on the state's behalf. When the project faltered, the abductees were hidden in a series of guarded communities known as "Invitation-Only Zones"--The fiction being that these were exclusive enclaves, not prisons. In 2002, Kim Jong Il admitted to kidnapping thirteen Japanese citizens and returned five of them (the other eight, he said, had died). From the moment that Robert S. Boynton first saw a photograph of these men and women, he became obsessed with the window their story provided into the vexed politics of Northeast Asia. In The Invitation-Only Zone, he untangles the logic behind the kidnappings and shows why some Japanese citizens described them as "their 9/11." He tells the story of how dozens were abducted and reeducated; how they married and had children; and how they lived anonymously as North Korean citizens. He speaks with nationalists, diplomats, abductees, and even crab fishermen, unearthing the bizarre North Korean propaganda tactics and the peculiar cultural interests of both countries. A deeply reported, thoroughly researched treatise on the power struggle of one of the most important areas in the global economy, Boynton's keen investigation is riveting and revelatory"-- Provided by publisher Cover 1 Just Another Southern Town: Mary Church Terrell and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Nation’s Capital 4 Copyright 5 Dedication 6 Contents 10 PHOTO INSERT.pdf 12 Prologue: January 27, 1950 22 1: On to the Battlefield 39 2: The Greatest Woman That We Have 63 3: They Come Standing Erect 89 4: An Example for All the World 111 5: The Radicalization of Mary Church Terrell 133 6: Segregation Will Go 162 7: This Thing Can Be Licked 183 8: A Bigger Step Is in Order 205 9: Eat Anywhere 227 Epilogue: Until Full and Final Victory 251 Acknowledgments 260 Notes 264 Prologue: January 27, 1950 267 Chapter 1: On to the Battlefield 274 Chapter 2: The Greatest Woman that we have 282 Chapter 3: They come standing erect 291 Chapter 4: An example for all the World 299 Chapter 5: The Radicalization of Mary Church Terrell 305 Chapter 6: Segregation will go 317 Chapter 7: This Thing Can Be Licked 324 Chapter 8: a Bigger step is in order 330 Chapter 9: Eat anywhere 338 Epilogue: Until Full and Final Victory 345 Note on Sources 349 Selected Bibliography 352 Index 356 A vital look at the Supreme Court case against Washington's segregated eating establishments in the earliest days of the civil rights movement. "The author describes and investigates his obsession with North Korean abduction of Japanese citizens"-- Provided by publisher