Morgan State honors its civil rights sit-in pioneers

In 1953, seven years afore the academic barrage of the demonstration movement, acceptance from Morgan State College were lining up circadian at the cafeteria adverse of Read’s biologic store. There, some administrator or afraid waitress would recite the Maryland arrest statute and ask them to leave.Scholars at the historically atramentous university accept they were the aboriginal acceptance in the nation to adapt sit-ins for desegregation. This week, their role in the nation’s civilian rights movement was assuredly honored.Please rise,” said Larry Gibson, a University of Maryland law professor, acclamation a standing-room army in the university cine amphitheater Thursday afternoon. Half the admirers took to its feet: about 200 alumni of what is now Morgan State University, the animal bequest of a 15-year attack of sit-ins and pickets and arrests that adapted a absolute Baltimore.There was Mel Butler, who had sat, hungry, at the Read’s Biologic Abundance cafeteria counter; and Clarence Mitchell III, arrested at the whites-only Hooper’s Restaurant city in 1960; and Regina Wright Bruce, confined with 350 added acceptance in a accumulation arrest alfresco the Northwood Theatre in 1963.