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22 The GUIDE to YELLOW SPRINGS 2019 – 20 YELLOW SPRINGS NEWS 4550 US 68 North, YS • 937-374-3289 www.stoneycreekgardenc.com Stoney Creek For Gardeners by Gardeners Come enjoy the experience of Stoney Creek in Yellow Springs! Enjoy a delightful selection of Perennials, Herbs, Natives, Annuals, Veggie Plants, Grasses, Strawberry Plants, Cacti & Succulents, Tropicals, House Plants, Premium Potting Soil, Fertilizers and Soil Amendments. garden center 108 Xenia Ave. 767-2131 * Dining room closes 1 hour earlier Over 45 years in Yellow Springs VEGETARIAN FRIENDLY Mon.-Thurs. 11:30 a.m.–10* p.m. Fri. & Sat. 11:30 a.m.–10:30* p.m. Sun. 1 p.m.–9* p.m. 767-2981 or 767-2162 More than 30 Years Planting and Caring for the Urban Forest and Tribute Trees in Yellow Springs TheYellowSprings TreeCommittee This article was originally published in November 2011. By MEGAN BACHMAN Fifty years ago this month, African-Amer - ican villager Paul Graham walked into Lewis Gegner’s barbershop on Xenia Avenue, sat down in his barber chair and asked for a haircut. “I can’t cut your hair,” the white barber- shop owner replied, according to Graham’s account. “I don’t know how. That’s all there is to it.” That day Graham filed a complaint against Gegner’s discriminatory practices with the Ohio Civil Rights Commission in a case that reached the Ohio Supreme Court. The historic moment was part of a 20-year effort to desegregate Yellow Springs, which A civil rights milestone, 50 years on PHOTO COURTESY OF ANTIOCHIANA, ANTIOCH COLLEGE Hundreds of local and area students, residents and law enforcement officials jammed downtown Yellow Springs on Xenia Avenue during a chaotic March 14, 1964, demonstration against Lewis Gegner's barbershop for his refusal to cut the hair of black people at his shop. escalated to the dramatic 1964 confronta - tion between police and protesters picketing Gegner’s shop — an event that landed 100 people in jail and thrust Yellow Springs into the national spotlight during the height of the civil rights movement. Soon after the confrontation, Gegner sold his shop and moved out of town, and the Ohio Supreme Court refused to hear Graham’s case. Gegner had never consented to cut a black man’s hair when pressured. Today, the villagers and Antioch College students who participated in the Gegner actions look back on the incident with a mixture of pride and disappointment, and draw lessons from a struggle that both defined and divided the community. Segregation in a tolerant town Though Yellow Springs had a reputation as an open and welcoming community, it was really a microcosm of the segregated U.S. at the time, said Graham, now 82. In the 1940s, the Little Theatre, now the Little Art Theatre, forced black patrons to sit behind a rope in the back of the theater; the Glen Café and Ye Olde Trail Tavern refused to serve African Americans; and none of the village’s three barbershops would cut a black person’s hair. “It became apparent that Yellow Springs wasn’t the type of community we thought it was,” Graham said. Over the next 20 years, a local citizens group, the Yellow Springs Committee for Fair Practices (YSCFP), successfully pres - sured most local businesses to accept black patrons through boycotts, picketing, civil disobedience, court action and the passing of an anti-discrimination ordinance. Gegner was the lone holdout and soon became the