FROM VICTORIES WITHOUT VIOLENCE BY ANNA RUTH FRY

# 62: “A NEGRO PRACTICES DIRECT ACTION”, P. 77-78

(The True Experience That Inspired “The Dream of Dixie’s Diner” Story & Script)

The following account of a triumph for courageous non-violence is given by Bayard Rustin, then traveling on behalf of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation. (Probably in the late 1940s)

Between speaking engagements in a Midwestern college town I went into a small restaurant to buy a hamburger and a glass of milk. I had not been sitting in the restaurant long before I noticed that I was being systematically ignored. After waiting about ten minutes I decided that the conflict had to be faced. I moved to one corner, stood directly before a waitress so that she could not overlook me, and said, “I would like to have a hamburger.”

“I’m sorry,” she replied, “but we can’t serve . . . er, er you, er . . . coloured people here.”

“Who’s responsible for this?” I asked. She made her reply in two gestures—the first indicating a rather buxom woman standing in the rear; and the second, a finger to the lip, an obvious appeal for me not to involve her in any way. I walked directly to the woman standing near the coffee urn in the rear of the restaurant. “I would like to know why it is impossible for me to be served here?” I asked.

“Well... well, er . . . “she stuttered, “it’s . . . er . . . it’s because we don’t do that in this town. They don’t serve coloured people in any of the restaurants.”

“Why? “I asked.

“It’s because they’re dirty,” she said, “and they won’t work, and because if I served them everybody would walk out, and then what would happen to my business?”

I took from my pocket a report compiled by the local F.O.R. Together we thought through many of the facts which explained the juvenile delinquency, unemployment, boisterousness, and other conditions and qualities allegedly peculiar to Negroes. One by one we eliminated all of the problems which would interfere with my being served, except the economic one. “Have you ever served Negroes?” I asked.

“No,” she replied warily.

“Then why do you believe that doing so would offend your customers?” I then appealed to her to make an experiment in the extension of democracy. After some hesitation she agreed to the following terms: that I would sit conspicuously in the front of the restaurant for ten minutes, during which time I would not eat my hamburger, and we would count the number of people who left on my account or who, being about to enter, retreated. If we saw one such person I would leave myself. Or if we did not I was to be served.

I waited fifteen minutes. Then she approached me, picked up the cold hamburger, placed a hot one before me, and said simply, “What will you have to drink with it?” I have been given to understand by Negroes and whites in the local situation that Mrs. Duffy continues to serve Negroes without embarrassment or conflict, which is indeed a courageous thing in the circumstances.

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