North Carolina Marks Site of State's First Restaurant Sit-In

by Hanna Raskin, Posted Dec 1st 2009 @ 4:00PM

The Royal Ice Cream protesters in prayer, Durham Public Library.

While standard civil rights histories give the most ink to the 1960 demonstration at a Greensboro Woolworth's, that lunch counter wasn't the site of the state's first sit-in -- and now there's a historical marker to prove it.

Durham, N.C., this week celebrated the formal unveiling of a marker on the site of the now-defunct Royal Ice Cream Parlor, more than 52 years after a group of black students known as "The Loyal Seven" challenged its segregationist policies.

Two of the protesters and a relative of the Royal's owner -- who organizer Eddie Davis describes as having "a different kind of sensibility" than his Jim Crow-upholding ancestor -- attended the ceremony. "It was sort of a reconciliation, bringing about unity and respect," Davis says.

The Royal, which sat at the edge of a black neighborhood, was popular with both white and black customers. According to Davis, integrated work crews would often pull into the Royal for a burger; the white workers used the front door, while the black workers entered the restaurant from the back.

"Then they would get their food, go outside and eat together," Davis explains.

But by 1957, many diners felt they could no longer abide by the so-called "separate but equal" system that the Supreme Court had already outlawed in public schools. "The time was ripe for folks to deal with civil rights," Davis says.

The protest was led by a 28-year old local minister who Davis says had been a classmate of Martin Luther King and wanted to show his friend that he, too, was capable of spurring civil disobedience.

"I think there was some kind of friendly rivalry," Davis speculates.

Rev. Douglas Moore recruited seven young men and women to follow him into the Royal through the rear door and sit down in booths traditionally reserved for white customers. All of the students were arrested and fined. The case was ultimately appealed to the Supreme Court, which declined to hear it.

The Royal never integrated its seating, a decision Davis says led to its demise.

"The pickets pushed away people," Davis says, referring to the Duke University students who paraded in front of the restaurant for years after the arrests. "It ended up being for only the staunchest segregationists. It doomed the business."

A black entrepreneur bought the ice cream shop and converted it to a fried chicken restaurant before changing residential patterns finally forced him to close. The site is now owned by a church, which operates a school on the property.

Davis says many of the ceremony attendees talked about how much they still miss Royal's ice cream, which was packaged and sold throughout Durham.

"The good thing is it wasn't condensed, they really put a lot of pride in it," Davis says. "It was good ice cream, even if it was segregated ice cream."

Filed Under: Chefs & Restaurants, Restaurants
Tags: civil rights, durham, ice cream, loyal seven, royal ice cream parlor, segregation, southern states