Demonstrators integrate Crisfield, MD restaurants: 1960
An anonymous writer details the effort by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) to desegregate restaurants in Crisfield, MD in December 1960.
CORE waged a campaign around the state during this period, conducting demonstrations in the Baltimore and Washington suburbs, in Annapolis and on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.
Crisfield was chosen as a target because it was the hometown of Governor J. Millard Tawes and would test Tawes’ statements about supporting the rights of Black people.
Ten student members of CORE were arrested Christmas Eve for refusing to leave the CITY restaurant. A second demonstration was planned to bring in the New Year.
Demonstrators met at the Shiloh Methodist Church in Crisfield, the same church that served as the headquarters for the 1938 crab pickers’ strike, and set out to attempt to desegregate the CITY restaurant.
The owner must have gotten word that the sit-in demonstrators were coming and closed early. However, to the surprise of the demonstrators, residents of Crisfield began approaching them to come to six different previously-segregated restaurants in town where they would be welcomed.
In the week in between demonstrations centuries-old practice of White supremacy in the town had been overturned.
For a PDF of this 8 ½ x 11 two-page summary, see washingtonareaspark.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/1962-c...
For more information and related images, see flic.kr/s/aHsk4UiXYi
Courtesy of the Civil Rights Movement Archive, www.crmvet.org/index.html
Demonstrators integrate Crisfield, MD restaurants: 1960
An anonymous writer details the effort by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) to desegregate restaurants in Crisfield, MD in December 1960.
CORE waged a campaign around the state during this period, conducting demonstrations in the Baltimore and Washington suburbs, in Annapolis and on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.
Crisfield was chosen as a target because it was the hometown of Governor J. Millard Tawes and would test Tawes’ statements about supporting the rights of Black people.
Ten student members of CORE were arrested Christmas Eve for refusing to leave the CITY restaurant. A second demonstration was planned to bring in the New Year.
Demonstrators met at the Shiloh Methodist Church in Crisfield, the same church that served as the headquarters for the 1938 crab pickers’ strike, and set out to attempt to desegregate the CITY restaurant.
The owner must have gotten word that the sit-in demonstrators were coming and closed early. However, to the surprise of the demonstrators, residents of Crisfield began approaching them to come to six different previously-segregated restaurants in town where they would be welcomed.
In the week in between demonstrations centuries-old practice of White supremacy in the town had been overturned.
For a PDF of this 8 ½ x 11 two-page summary, see washingtonareaspark.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/1962-c...
For more information and related images, see flic.kr/s/aHsk4UiXYi
Courtesy of the Civil Rights Movement Archive, www.crmvet.org/index.html