Saturday, Feb.
24, 2007 — Piqua Daily Call
Fight for equal rights happened here, too
In mid-1940s, local
NAACP chapter played
active role in bringing
better service to Piquads
BY BECCA MANNING
Staff Writer
bmanning@dailycall.com
PIQUA — A decade be-
fore Rosa Parks refused to
give up her seat on a bus in
Montgomery, Ala., a group
of Piqua residents sat down
at a local lunch counter and
refused to leave until they
were served.
The 1945 sit-in, led by
the Piqua chapter of the
NAACP (National Associa-
tion for the Advancement of
Colored People), took place
at the bus station lunch
counter located in the lower
southeast corner of the Fa-
vorite Hotel (Fort Piqua
Hotel) — one of the many
restaurants in the city at
the time that refused to
serve blacks.
“They said they were
staying until they were
served and that they had
been in touch with local at-
torney William McCulloch,
who had promised assis-
tance if they weren’t
served,” said Jim Oda,
Flesh Public Library direc-
tor and local historian.
“They (the restaurant)
backed down and served
them.”
At the time, segregation
was a common social prac-
tice in Piqua.
“That’s the beginning (of
a change). Segregation did-
n’t simply vanish from
restaurants, but it appears
to have moved fairly
quickly in the downtown
area where a majority of
the bigger restaurants
were,” Oda said.
Former Piqua resident
Imogene (Andy) Jones was
a member of the local
NAACP and was involved
in the sit-in.
“We sat around the
In June 1929, diners eat at the Union Bus Terminal Lunch Counter located in the southeast corner of
the Favorite Hotel (also known as Fort Piqua Hotel), run by the Dodge Taxi Co.The local restaurant was
the site of an NAACP-led sit-in for equal service in 1945.
PROVIDED PHOTO
Dorothea (Fowlis) Burton is
pictured here in her 1959
Piqua Central High School
senior class photo. Burton
grew up in Piqua during the
1940s and ’50s and remem-
bers there were certain
things blacks could not do,
from joining the local Girl
Scouts to being served at
area restaurants.
restaurant wherever we
wanted. We said if they
weren’t going to serve us,
they weren’t going to serve
anybody,” Jones recalled.
Now a Dayton resident,
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE FLESH PUBLIC LIBRARY
Jones grew up in Piqua dur-
ing the 1930s and early 40s
and graduated from Piqua
Central High School in
1944.
In addition to not being
served at local restaurants,
there was segregation in
the theaters, separate clubs
at the YMCA and YWCA
and many other cases of
black residents being
treated differently, Jones
said.
As a teen, Jones was one
of the first blacks to per-
form in the high school
choir. She remembers the
choir director telling her
she could not be given a
main part in the school’s
operetta.
“He said, ‘You should
have the lead but I can’t
have you against the other
lead singer,’ who was a
white male,” Jones said. In-
stead, the director chose
her to sing the national an-
them at home football
games.
After high school, Jones
said she and others had a
difficult time getting local
jobs.
“I had a cousin who grad-
uated summa cum laude
from college and couldn’t
get a job in Piqua and had
to go out of state. My girl-
friend graduated from Capi-
tal University and couldn’t
get a job in the area,” Jones
said.
Unlike in many towns
further south, discrimina-
tion in Piqua was subtle,
she said.
“In other places it was
known. … We had no prob-
lems like that. We had no
going to the back of the bus
because there weren’t that
many buses to begin with,”
Jones said. “It was very
subtle. Unless you tried to
do something, you didn’t
know you couldn’t.”
Restarted in Piqua in
1942, the local NAACP
helped bring blacks to-
gether to fight some of the
more overt discriminations.
In 1946, shortly after the
lunch counter protest,
Jones took part in another
NAACP demonstration in
the Schine’s Piqua Theatre,
located on the corner of
Greene and Main streets,
where seating was segre-
gated.
 “When we had one of the
best movies where we knew
it would be crowded, we
went in, and instead of sit-
ting in the three rows in
the back where blacks were
allowed, we went all over
the theater. We went in
twos, like for a witness,”
Jones recalled. “When we
wouldn’t move, they knew
they couldn’t do that any-
more.”
One story often told
about the theater protest is
that when the NAACP
members sat throughout
the room, the theater re-
fused to show the movie,
Oda said. That’s when a
World War II veteran re-
portedly stood up and said,
“If they’re good enough to
serve with me, they’re good
enough to watch a movie
with me,” and the film was
played.
That was the end of seg-
regated seating in both
Schine’s Piqua Theatre and
the smaller opera house in
town, where black viewers
had been made to sit in the
balcony, Oda said.
Jones said not all her
friends were involved in the
protests, but she felt it was
important to take a stand.
“I didn’t like what was
happening to me and my
family — for example, when
I’m trying to get a job and I
can’t get a job because of
what I am,” she said.
Long-time Piqua resident
Dorothea (Fowlis) Burton, a
1959 Piqua Central High
School graduate, also re-
called certain places that
she and her friends couldn’t
go.
“There were things we
knew we couldn’t do,” she
said. “We were not invited
to join in the Brownies or
the Girl Scout troops. We
could not get membership to
the Hollow (swimming
area). We were not encour-
aged to go to the skating
rink — at one time we were
not allowed in, then could
go later on in the ’50s but
we had to have our own
skates.”
Segregation in Piqua was
“de facto” — by fact, not
law, said Art Thomas, a
1952 Piqua graduate who
now resides in Springfield.
“There were places where
people of color did not live.
They were all over Piqua
except these exclusive
places,” Thomas said.
At the YMCA, “We got in
and played basketball, but
that was about it. Most of
the other activities were off
limits, especially swim-
ming,” he said.
He also experienced diffi-
culty getting a job other
than as a custodian in
Piqua.
Thomas remembers going
to apply for a job with some
of his white friends after
graduating from high school.
His friends were given ap-
plications while he was told
they “didn’t need janitors,”
even though all the boys had
gone through the same edu-
cational system.
After college, Thomas
joined the U.S. Air Force and
was stationed for about six
months in 1956 at Gunther
Air Force Base just outside
of Montgomery, Ala.
“We would go into Mont-
gomery to the Alabama
State Teachers College, and
we just experienced the
things that other blacks ex-
perienced during the bus
boycott (started in 1955),”
Thomas recalled. “We met
— we didn’t know them per-
sonally — but we attended
Dexter Avenue Baptist
Church where Martin
Luther King was a young
minister, and we met Miss
Rosa Parks who attended
the St. Paul AME Church.
(Thomas was a member of
the Cyrene AME Church in
Piqua).
“At that time ... there was
de jure segregation in the
south. It was the law. There
were ‘white’ and ‘colored’
signs, white waiting rooms,
restrooms, restaurants —
everything socially was seg-
regated. You knew you were
in the south. It was quite
different,” he said.
Burton said even in
Piqua the black community
felt the effects of the his-
toric events happening in
the south and throughout
the country.
“In a way, we were af-
fected because we did have
the NAACP and people that
tried to keep us on the na-
tional level besides what
we were reading and seeing
on TV,” she said.
Change in Piqua hap-
pened gradually, Burton
said, though remnants of
the prejudices that oc-
curred still remain to this
day.
“I think there’s a little
bit of it left over but I try to
go anywhere I feel like
going,” said Burton, who re-
turned to Piqua with her
husband, Ronald, to raise
their daughter, Nicole.
“She graduated in 1990
and there were things that
happened at the schools,
there’s still some prejudice
in the way of being treated.
Nationwide, it’s still that
way. There’s just some
things you don’t get in-
cluded in,” Burton said.
The history of the civil
rights struggle in Piqua is
one that needs more voices,
Oda said. Because much of
it was subtle and not re-
ported in the newspaper,
finding information is diffi-
cult.
“Even in discussion and
oral history people don’t
want to talk about it be-
cause they are ashamed of
the background — some of
it was fear of some kind of
retribution,” he said.
But talking about it is
just what needs to happen,
especially as those who
lived through the move-
ment in the 1940s are get-
ting older and passing
away.
“Today’s kids have got to
know that the civil rights
movement wasn’t just
something that happened
in the south. It happened in
the north, and it happened
in Piqua,” Oda said.