1. The forgotten civil rights case of Sanitary Grocery Company

2. Mention “Civil Rights Events” and most people will think of …
Rosa Parks
Martin Luther King
The 1950’s and 1960’s

3. Long before the well-known events of the Civil Rights Era, a group of citizens used their Constitutional Rights to form an Interest Group to try to improve economic conditions in their predominantly black neighborhood.
What First Amendment Rights were they using?

4. On August 18, 1933, John Aubrey Davis was incensed to find out the three black employees at a business known as “Hamburger Grill” at 11th & U Streets NW in Washington, DC had just been fired and replaced with three white employees.

5. Davis, a 21 year old recent college graduate, organized several residents of the predominantly black neighborhood near Hamburger Grill. He convinced them to boycott the business.
What do you think he was hoping to accomplish?
Had Hamburger Grill broken any laws?

6. Without the support of the neighborhood it served, Hamburger Grill’s business vanished.
Within two days, Hamburger Grill had re-hired its three black employees… with an increase in pay. The boycott was over. Business returned to normal.

7. After the successful Hamburger Grill boycott, Davis met with two other residents of the neighborhood: Franklin Thorne and Belford Lawson. Lawson was 32 years old, and had recently graduated from law school and opened an office in DC.
John Aubrey Davis
Belford V. Lawson, Jr.

8. Can you suggest a name for the new organization?
The group quickly attracted more residents who wanted to take direct action to create more jobs for their neighborhood.
Can you suggest a name for the new organization?

9. The New Negro Alliance. Davis and the others named their new group
What do you think of that name?

10. In the 1920’s and 1930’s, many African-Americans proudly described themselves as “New Negroes.”
A "New Negro" was a self-confident African American who, unlike those of the previous generation, refused to passively submit to Jim Crow laws and intolerance.

11. More than 20 years later, Martin Luther King explained the term in a television interview.
“The Open Mind” (1957)

12. Encouraged by the success of the Hamburger Grill boycott, the NNA decided to use
Boycotts
Picketing
Negotiating
Legal action
Lobbying
Education
Community pressure
To secure more jobs for black residents of the nation’s capital in their own neighborhoods.
The Lincoln Temple church in Washington DC is a historic location for many reasons, including the fact that it was a meeting place for the NNA.

13. The next target of the NNA was a big one: the “Evening Star,” Washington’s biggest newspaper, which had been published since The Star started hiring black paper carriers (known as “paper boys” at the time) very soon after the NNA threatened a boycott.

14. A new A&P grocery store was the next picketing location, followed by two more A&P locations in DC.
By December, 1933, the big grocery chain had hired 18 black employees, including one manager.

15. The NNA quickly gained a reputation as one of the most effective direct action civil rights groups in the nation. Similar groups formed in other cities using the NNA’s “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work” slogan.

16. Then, the NNA had a problem
Two businesses went to court and received injunctions against the Alliance.
An Injunction is a court order that tells someone not to do something. The NNA was ordered not to picket the stores.
In one case, NNA co-founder Belford Lawson, an attorney, tried unsuccessfully to get an appellate court to dissolve the injunction.

17. Today, people drive by th Street NW every day without realizing they’re passing a historic location.

18. Where the “Eleven Market” stands today,
a new Sanitary Grocery Store opened on April 3, 1936.
All its employees were white.
The NNA started picketing, and called for a boycott.

19. At that time, Sanitary Grocery was a major chain, with hundreds of locations in several states, including 255 stores in Washington, DC.
Does “Sanitary” seem like an odd name for a grocery store?

20. Then, SANITARY GROCERY OBTAINED AN INjUNCTION
Again, the NNA went to the appellate court.
Again, they lost.
They were not allowed to picket at the Sanitary Grocery location.

21. agreed to look at the case.
But… a surprise
The US Supreme Court
agreed to look at the case.

22. How are Federal Judges selected?
Belford Lawson was not optimistic. He would have to act as the lead attorney, and no black attorney had ever won a case at the Supreme Court.
Belford V. Lawson, Jr.
He had planned to use a more experienced lawyer, William Hastie, but Hastie had just made history in another way: he had become the first African-American Federal Judge.
How are Federal Judges selected?
William Hastie

23. One young lawyer working on the case of New Negro Alliance v
One young lawyer working on the case of New Negro Alliance v. Sanitary Grocery Co. would become the most famous of all.
Thurgood Marshall in 1936

24. Thurgood Marshall’s great grandfather was a slave born in the part of Africa that is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Thurgood Marshall in 1967

25. In 1967, President Lyndon Johnson nominated Marshall as the first African-American Justice on the US Supreme Court.
Marshall retired in 1991, and died 16 months later at the age of 84.
Thurgood Marshall in 1967

26. courts and ruled in favor of the New Negro Alliance.
On March 28, 1938, Lawson, Marshall, and the others were astonished when the United States Supreme Court overturned the lower
courts and ruled in favor of the New Negro Alliance.
Belford V. Lawson, Jr.
Lawson had become the first African-American attorney to win a case at the nation’s highest court.
Thurgood Marshall

27. Sanitary Grocery was a landmark case
Sanitary Grocery was a landmark case. Sanitary didn’t completely go out of business, but the costs of the legal battle put the chain deeply in debt. Sanitary sold its DC-area stores to the larger Safeway chain.

28. Ironically, Safeway didn’t hire black employees, either.
Even though courts could no longer issue injunctions to stop picketing, the NNA was not able to get Safeway to change its hiring practices.

29. Some of the larger businesses were able to successfully resist the Alliance organized picketing and boycotts.
Peoples Drug Store was another employer who refused to hire African-Americans.

30. The NNA lasted about ten years.
For several years, it published a weekly newspaper.
Even though the NNA was not successful in every case, it is credited with securing more than 5,000 jobs for local neighborhood residents from

31. Bonus Question: What did President
Franklin D. Roosevelt do in 1941 that helped advance the goals of the NNA?