Coordinating Committee for the Enforcement of the D.C. Anti-Discrimination Laws

Formed in 1949 through the efforts of Mary Church Terrell and Annie Stein after the D.C. Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild issued an opinion that anti-discrimination laws passed in 1872 and 1873 were valid; members of the committee provoked an incident by having three "well-dressed, well-behaved" African Americans seek service in Thompson's Restaurant, they were refused service and filed a suit in the District of Columbia Municipal Court against the restaurant where the judge ruled that these laws had been "repealed by implication" in an 1878 code; the case was appealed and eventually went to the U.S. Supreme Court, where a unanimous decision was issued that the earlier laws were valid; While the case was proceeding through the courts, the committee organized boycotts, pickets, and other protest activities against restaurants in the District of Columbia that were refusing to serve African Americans; by 1953 restaurants in the District of Columbia were technically not discriminating and the committee focused on seeing that the laws were observed in practice; they also began to check on discrimination in hotel lodging.