- Sit-ins & commerce
- Segregation
- October 19, 1960 to 1961
- City of Atlanta
- Location approximate
Rich's department store sit-in and King's arrest (Oct. 1960)
On October 19, 1960 Martin Luther King Jr. and student leader Lonnie King were arrested at the restaurant counter of Rich's, Atlanta's largest department store. King's jailing drew national attention weeks before the presidential election.
The record
The student movement asked King to join a mass sit-in. He and Lonnie King went to the lunch counter inside Rich's; about 50 protesters, including A. D. King, were arrested that day, and more than 2,000 protested at 16 locations the next day (Wikipedia). The others were released, but Judge J. Oscar Mitchell invoked King's probation from an earlier case and on October 25 sentenced him to four months of hard labor. King was taken to the state prison before dawn the next day. About 100 Klansmen in regalia counter-protested in front of Rich's that November, and area store sales fell 13 percent from 1959. Under the March 1961 agreement, downtown lunch counters desegregated in fall 1961.
Today: The 1924 Rich's building on Broad St is part of the Sam Nunn Atlanta Federal Center.