Primary People: George Willis, Albert Dunn, Woodrow T Lewis, and Lester Maddox.
Summary: George Willis, (driver), Albert Dunn (passenger), and Woodrow T Lewis (backseat) sought to order from the Pickrick Restaurant. They are met with a mob of up to one hundred people, led by Lester Maddox, wielding axe handles. Maddox confronted the ministry students. He threatened them with a gun and forced them off the premises.
Quotations
“There was a mob of Whites standing there when we drove up to the Pickrick Restaurant yard,” Lewis says. “Willis was very, very angry and Dunn too. They were saying, ‘Look at them, look at them, look at them.’ Willis said, ‘I should take this car and drive it right through the crowd.’ ”
Greene, Ronnie. Heart of Atlanta: Five Black Pastors and the Supreme Court Victory for Integration (pp. 83-84). Chicago Review Press. Kindle Edition.
“George Willis was driving, Albert Dunn in the passenger seat, and Woodrow T. Lewis in back. Dunn and Willis had been ringleaders of the integration plan, hungry to test the new law at a restaurant that had served its popular diner fare only to White customers, and Lewis felt equally emboldened to demand a seat at the table. As the trio pulled toward the Hemphill Avenue establishment, they witnessed a mass of bodies standing out front, up to one hundred people, anxiously awaiting their arrival. Many held axe handles, the largest of them thirty-six inches long. ”
Greene, Ronnie. Heart of Atlanta: Five Black Pastors and the Supreme Court Victory for Integration (pp. 83-84). Chicago Review Press. Kindle Edition.
Media/External Links
Maddox kicking car and other reporters and white people around the car with TECH TOWER visible in background
Link to Media Source: https://www.alamy.com/restaurant-operator-lester-maddox-right-brandishes-a-small-pistol-as-he-and-an-unidentified-youth-armed-with-an-ax-handle-chase-a-black-person-from-the-parking-lot-of-maddox-eating-establishment-in-atlanta-july-3-1964-the-person-was-one-of-three-who-attempted-to-integrate-the-restaurant-of-the-long-time-segregationist-who-vowed-he-would-go-to-jail-before-serving-blacks-ap-photohorace-cort-image524059968.html
Lester Maddox, Armed witha pistol, forces ministry student Albert Dunn off the Pickrick grounds in July 1964. Between the men, holding an axe handle, is Lester Maddox Jr. AP
Link to Media Source: Greene, Ronnie. Heart of Atlanta: Five Black Pastors and the Supreme Court Victory for Integration (pp. 88). Chicago Review Press. Kindle Edition.
