Feb. 2, 1964 - Thirteen white students from the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University demonstrated today outside a segregated restaurant in downtown Atlanta that has been the scene of several days of racial unrest. Three of the pickets were girls. Among the signs they carried were ones saying, “Georgia Students Protest Segregation,” “Atlanta Must Be Desegregated,” and “Georgia Students for Human Rights.”
The picketing was at Leb’s Restaurant, where members of the Ku Klux Klan and Negro pickets clashed last week. More than 200 demonstrators were arrested last week on charges of disorderly conduct and disturbing the peace. Negro leaders have demanded the dismissal of charges against those arrested as a condition for agreeing to a 30-day suspension of demonstrations. Atlanta Mayor Ivan Allen Jr. has rejected the Negroes’ truce terms.
The pickets today handed out mimeographed statements calling for integration. “We protest segregation and our segregated city,” the statement said. “We believe it is wrong to refuse service to a Negro. We believe a free city must be open to all its citizens and, further, that it is the obligation of all Atlantans to make it free.”
