Press Interview on Atlanta Hotel and Restaurant Desegregation
Author: King, Martin Luther, Jr.
Date: July 5, 1962?
Location: Atlanta, Ga.
Genre: Interview
Topic: Nonviolence
Voter registration
Details
More than a thousand delegates arrived in Atlanta for the NAACP’s fifty-third annual convention to find that some local hotels refused accommodations to African American patrons.1 On the second day of the convention, more than one hundred attendees began demonstrations at sixteen hotels, motels, and restaurants that refused to serve African Americans.2 King predicts in the following interview that through negotiation, legal methods, and nonviolent direct action, the desegregation of Atlanta hotels and restaurants “will come in the very near future.” In January 1964, fourteen major hotels and motels publicly pledged to desegregate their facilities.3 The following transcript is taken from a film recording of the interview.
[Interviewer]: How long will your speech tonight last?
[King]: About thirty, thirty-five minutes, I think.
[Interviewer]: Okay, thanks. Dr. King, you’ve been active in trying to register Negro delegates to the convention…
[Voice off-camera]: Take it from the top. [gap in film]
[Interviewer]: Dr. King, you’ve been active in trying to register Negro delegates to the convention at hotels here in Atlanta. What—do you think the complete desegregation of Atlanta hotels and restaurants is a possibility?
[King]: Yes, I definitely feel that this is something that will come in the not-too-distant future. There are still a few recalcitrant hotel owners who don’t want to give in at all, but I think the vast majority of them know that this is inevitable and they are working to get it done. So that I would say it will come in the very near future.
[Interviewer]: Well, what methods will be used to try to achieve this desegregation?
[King]: Well, we will continue to negotiate, and of course there may be some legal methods used—that is a real possibility. And I would not throw out direct action, nonviolent direct action as a possibility—having sit-ins and wait-in in hotel lobbies. We have discussed this, and we will use the best method possible if the negotiation breaks down.
[Interviewer]: Dr. King, what progress is being made for the Negro here in Atlanta and throughout the South?
[King]: Well, I think we’re making some significant strides in Atlanta and all over the South. At least massive resistance has about broken down, with the exception of Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina. Most states have come to see the need of complying with the Supreme Court’s decision. Now our big problem now is a problem of dealing with tokenism. Although there are some states realizing that they must comply with the Supreme Court’s desegregation decision, they’re still only complying in a token manner. And we feel that token integration is little more than token democracy and that we must revolt against this as much as we did massive resistance.
[Interviewer]: Do the different Negro organizations such as your Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the NAACP agree on the, on the methods to be used to achieve this desegregation?
[King]: Well, there are differences of emphasis, but certainly we all are united on the goal we seek. I would say that we’re working and moving up the same road. It may be a three-lane road with some working mainly in nonviolent direct action, others mainly through litigation and by mobilizing political forces for meaningful legislation, and others working through education and research, but all are moving up the same road toward the same goal, which is freedom and first-class citizenship.
1. The NAACP’s convention lasted from 2 July through 8 July 1962. On the eve of the convention, Roy Wilkins, executive secretary of the NAACP, announced that the Atlanta Cabana Motor Hotel refused accommodations to Dr. Eugene Reed, president of the New York branch of the NAACP, and William Booth, vice president of the New York branch. Additionally, Ralph J. Bunche, United Nations undersecretary for Special Political Affairs, was refused hotel accommodations at the Dinkler Plaza Hotel (“NAACP Says Atlanta Motel Barred Two,” Chicago Daily Defender, 3 July 1962; Stanley S. Scott, “Seek All Rights in a World Where Hopes for Permanent Peace Live, Bunche Urges,” Atlanta Daily World, 7 July 1962). Reed filed a $10,500 suit against the Atlanta Cabana Motor Hotel, which was dismissed in September 1962 on grounds that the hotel did not violate his Fourteenth Amendment rights (“Delegate Files Suit Against Hotel Here,” Atlanta Daily World, 5 July 1962; Reed v. Sarno et al., Civil Action no. 7982 [N.D. Ga. 1962]).
2. See Al Kuettner, “Hotels Picketed by NAACP Groups,” Atlanta Daily World, 4 July 1962.
3. Stanley S. Scott, “14 Leading Hotels, Motels to Desegregate Voluntarily,” Atlanta Daily World, 11 January 1964.
Source: NyNyFMN, Fox Movietone News Clips, ITN Source, New York, N.Y.