Just Another Southern Town: Mary Church Terrell and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Nation's Capital

Just Another Southern Town: Mary Church Terrell and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Nation's Capital - Hardcover

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Just Another Southern Town: Mary Church Terrell and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Nation's Capital
  • Just Another Southern Town: Mary Church Terrell and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Nation's Capital
Just Another Southern Town: Mary Church Terrell and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Nation's Capital - Hardcover

Just Another Southern Town: Mary Church Terrell and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Nation's Capital - Hardcover

by Joan Quigley
$36.99
$36.99

Book Overview

by Joan Quigley (Author)

In January of 1950, Mary Church Terrell, an 86-year-old charter member of the NAACP, headed into Thompson's Restaurant, just a few blocks from the White House, and requested to be served. She and her companions were informed by the manager that they could not eat in his establishment, because they were "colored." Terrell, a former suffragette and one of the country's first college-educated African American women, took the matter to court. Three years later, the Supreme Court vindicated her outrage: District of Columbia v. John R. Thompson Co., Inc. was decided in June 1953, invalidating the segregation of restaurants and cafes in the nation's capital.

In Just Another Southern Town, Joan Quigley recounts an untold chapter of the civil rights movement: an epic battle to topple segregation in Washington, the symbolic home of American democracy. At the book's heart is the formidable Mary Church Terrell and the test case she mounts seeking to enforce Reconstruction-era laws prohibiting segregation in D.C. restaurants. Through the prism of Terrell's story, Quigley reassesses Washington's relationship to civil rights history, bringing to life a pivotal fight for equality that erupted five years before Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of a Montgomery bus and a decade before the student sit-in movement rocked segregated lunch counters across the South.

At a time when most civil rights scholarship begins with Brown v. Board of Education, Just Another Southern Town unearths the story of the nation's capital as an early flashpoint on race. A rich portrait of American politics and society in the mid-20th century, it interweaves Terrell's narrative with the courtroom drama of the case and the varied personalities of the justices who ultimately voted unanimously to prohibit segregated restaurants. Resonating with gestures of courage and indignation that radiate from the capital's streets and sidewalks to its marble-clad seats of power, this work restores Mary Church Terrell and the case that launched a crusade to their rightful place in the pantheon of civil rights history.

Author Biography

Joan Quigley is a lawyer and journalist who lives outside of Washington, D.C. She is the author of The Day the Earth Caved In: An American Mining Tragedy.

Number of Pages: 378
Dimensions: 1.5 x 9.3 x 6.2 IN
Publication Date: January 29, 2016
ISBN9780199371518
Author Joan Quigley
PublisherOxford Univ PR
GenreBiography and History
FormatHardcover
PublishedJanuary 2016
LanguageENG- English
Pages378
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

Related Subjects

Biography & Autobiography History Nonfiction

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More by Joan Quigley

The Day the Earth Caved in: An American Mining Tragedy

The Day the Earth Caved in: An American Mining Tragedy - Paperback

The Day the Earth Caved in: An American Mining Tragedy - Paperback

By Joan Quigley

About Joan Quigley

Joan Quigley first glimpsed the Centralia mine fire at age fifteen, during her grandmother's funeral at St. Ignatius Cemetery. A former Miami Herald business reporter, she is a graduate of Princeton and of Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. She is a recipient of the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award for this book.

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