When we think of the battlefields in America’s long fight for civil rights, we tend to think of a few specific places: the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, the front seats of city buses, the Lorraine Motel, for instance. But segregation was rampant in almost every type of public space, from hotels, schools, department stores and churches, to even the most casual of restaurants.
The lunch counters at Woolworth’s department stores were once such places: They were fixtures in almost every American city, yet many remained staunchly segregated well into the postwar years.
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