What are you complaining about? If they don’t want you…

““What are you complaining about? If they don’t want you over here, why don’t you go over on Hastings Street and get yourself something?” This led to the following exchange: DAC members: We don’t want to eat on Hastings. We want to eat here. Police officer: Well, the man said he don’t want to serve you. DAC members: Yes, but the law says he has to serve us. This could lead to “an argument with the police officer, but he eventually would write up the case.” After securing an agreement from the restaurant that it would now welcome black patrons, and then sending a DAC team to ensure that African Americans did indeed receive service, Jimmy and his fellow activists still might face resistance and hostility. “We’d have lots of people that didn’t want us in there,” he recalled. “Even the customers in there would say, ‘we’re going home, get our guns, and run these niggers out of here.’ ” Indeed, Jimmy recalled confronting hostile responses at various locations and in multiple forms. At the Hotel Detroiter, for example, the DAC team received service, but the food “was full of salt,” while other establishments would “deliberately break the glasses up in front of us to let us know they wasn’t going to eat out of something some nigger ate out of.” 94””

— Stephen M. Ward