Supreme Court rules unanimously: Washington's 1873 anti-discrimination law still stands

Eight decades of unenforced Reconstruction-era law sat quietly on the books — until a 87-year-old activist decided to test it. On January 27, 1950, Mary Church Terrell, chair of Washington's Coordinating Committee for desegregation, walked into Thompson's diner on 14th Street and asked to be served; the manager refused. The case wound through municipal and federal courts before reaching the Supreme Court, which ruled unanimously on June 8, 1953, that the District's 1873 anti-discrimination law had never been repealed and that restaurants in Washington could not refuse to serve Black patrons. The ruling helped dismantle institutionalized segregation in the nation's capital, alongside Hurd v. Hodge and Bolling v. Sharpe…