Nov. 4, 1963: 58 years ago, Nov 3 1963, the Ad Hoc Committee to End Discrimination [...]
58 years ago, Nov 3 1963, the Ad Hoc Committee to End Discrimination organized a mass sit-in at Mel’s Drive-in on Geary St. in San Francisco to protest the restaurant’s racially discriminatory hiring practices, becoming the first mass sit-in of the Bay Area’s Civil Right Movement
The Ad Hoc Committee began a picketing campaign in October at several Mel’s Drive-in locations throughout the Bay Area. On Nov. 2, protests were taken to the home of City Supervisor/Mayoral candidate Harold Dobbs, one of the restaurant chain’s two owners
The next day a large group joined the picket outside of the Mel’s on Geary. Entering the restaurant, they filled every empty booth and stool until they were carried out by cops. 64 people were arrested that night and 48 the next evening, as protests continued through the weekend
A negotiation process between Mel’s and the Ad Hoc Committee started on Nov. 6 and within two days the restaurant’s management came to an employment agreement with the Ad Hocs, promising nondiscriminatory hiring practices, a training school for black employees, and new benefits
@Twinkie_Defense Anthony Ashbolt’s treatment of the park in his “Cultural History of the Radical Sixties in the SF Bay Area” is probably the strongest scholarly writing on the park i know of
