On July 3, 1964, three Black ministerial students sought chicken dinners at Atlanta's Pickrick Restaurant. Segregationist owner Lester Maddox served only point-of-a-gun threats. A few days later, two Black ministers looking for beds at the Heart of Atlanta Motel were shown the door instead. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibiting such discrimination wasn't even a week old, and here came legal tests bound for the highest court. Author Ronnie Greene, a 2013 graduate of and now lecturer in the Johns Hopkins Advanced Academic Programs writing program, evocatively takes readers back to this heated era and the case Heart of Atlanta Inc. v. United States, which ended segregation in public accommodations.
