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elleng

(130,126 posts)
Sun Oct 27, 2013, 12:17 PM Oct 2013

1960 Md. Sit-In Case Remembered as Part of History.

Robert M. Bell was 16 years old when he recruited classmates to join a sit-in at a downtown Baltimore restaurant. The sit-in was Bell's first, and he remembers being a little nervous.

On the afternoon of June 17, 1960, the group entered Hooper's restaurant, and a hostess said she wouldn't seat them. "I'm sorry, but we haven't integrated as yet," she said. The group pushed past her and sat anyway. Police were called, and 12 demonstrators, including Bell, were charged with trespassing. Eventually, the case made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

This month marks 50 years since the case known as Bell v. Maryland was argued in front of the justices. In the 50 years since, Bell went on to become a lawyer and later a judge on Maryland's highest court, where he sat on the bench with two men who had been prosecutors on his case. He became the court's chief judge in 1996, a position he held until retiring earlier this year age 70. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan called him a "living legend" before a recent lecture on the case at the Supreme Court. . .

A few months after their protest, a judge convicted the group of trespassing and fined them $10 each, though the fines were suspended. Their convictions were later upheld by Maryland's highest court — the one Bell would come to lead. The court wrote that "the right to speak freely and to make public protest does not import a right to invade or remain upon the property of private citizens."

The case was then appealed to the Supreme Court, but its ruling in 1964 was largely a letdown. By then, four years after the sit-in at Hooper's, Maryland had changed its laws so that businesses could not deny customers service based on their race. As a result, a majority of justices decided to send the case back to Maryland's highest court, asking it to reconsider the case in light of the new laws. But even some of the Supreme Court justices were upset that their court ducked the constitutional questions in the case.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2013/10/27/us/politics/ap-us-bell-v-maryland.html?hp&_r=0

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1960 Md. Sit-In Case Remembered as Part of History. (Original Post) elleng Oct 2013 OP
Yes! we need to remember and be thnakful for their witness! gopiscrap Oct 2013 #1
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