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GUIDE TO YELLOW SPR INGS | 2021– 2022 45 The following article was published in the March 21, 1984, edition of the Yellow Springs News by then-editor emeritus Kieth Howard. Racial discrimination protests recalled— A CENTURY OF CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVISM By KI ETH HOWARD T he March 1964 civil rights demonstration was just one event of decades — one might even say a century — of Yellow Springs efforts locally to end racial segregation and discrimination here. Go back a century. In 1887, Yellow Springs desegregated its public schools [after a prolonged battle led by Black residents]. Another state law passed in the 1880s made it illegal for “places of public accommodation” to discrimi - nate, but in Yellow Springs, as elsewhere, this law was seldom observed and campaigns were waged over the years against the generally rampant segrega- tion and discrimination. About 500 people gathered and marched in Yellow Springs, June 6, 2020, to protest racism, police vio - lence and the killing in late May of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. Here, protesters walk through downtown Yellow Springs during an impromptu march. | PHOTO BY EMMA SCHUTTE Horace Mann, Antioch Col - lege’s first president, had ruled at the time of its opening (in 1853) that Antioch would not discriminate against women or Black people. But student pressure had to be applied to the college administra- tion in 1925 to end a policy of excluding Blacks, a policy which had developed in the immediately preceding years. In the early 1940s, Yellow Springs people ended racial segregation at the Little Art Theatre with sit-in protest demonstrations. Early in 1946, a small group of local citizens persuaded one of the three barber shops then operating in Yellow Springs to end its policy of serving only white customers. But when it was realized that not only barber shops but downtown eating places did not serve Blacks, and that local and area realtors were practicing segregation in their CIVIL RIGHTS Continued on page 46 Cheryl B.Levine, Psy.D. • Kathleen Galarza, Ph.D. • John Beer, LISW Mike LeMaster, LPCC • Eileen Potter, LPCC, IMFT • Ken Drude, Ph.D. 642 E. Dayton-Yellow Springs Rd., Fairborn The Lotus Center, 4949 Urbana Rd., Springfield 937-390-3800 www.positiveperspectivescounseling.com 259 Xenia Ave. www.sunr isecafe. n e t 9 3 7 - 7 67-7211 SunriSe CAfe BreAkfASt • LunCh • Dinner World cuisine with local fare SEE OUR MENU!