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An Iowa Civil Rights site

January 19, 2009

The Martin Luther King Jr. holiday is a good time to recall a Des Moines incident that foreshadowed civil rights events starting a decade later:

In July 1948, Griffin, her baby daughter Phyllis and two other African Americans ordered ice cream cones at the Katz Drug Store in Des Moines but were refused service because they were black. It was the first time that Griffin had experienced such discrimination directly.

She successfully sued, customers boycotted Katz, and the store eventually abandoned its discrimanatory policy.

The Katz space is now occupied by a Quiznos: