Georgia Tech Dedicates Plaza At Site Where Black Students Were Once Chased From Cafeteria
Shelbe Johnson and Kemuel Russell, members of Georgia Tech’s African-American Student Union speak during the dedication of a new plaza on campus Wednesday.
Emil Moffatt/WABE News
Georgia Tech has redesigned part of its campus that was the site of a violent, racist incident from Atlanta’s past.
A new plaza commemorates the place where three Black seminary students were chased out of a cafeteria by the future governor of Georgia.
In 1964, Albert Dunn, Woodrow Lewis and George S. Wills Jr., three students from the Black Interdenominational Theological Center, walked into the Pickrick, a restaurant near Georgia Tech’s campus.
The Civil Rights Act had just passed and was supposed to end segregation. But that wasn’t the case at the Pickrick, which was owned by Lester Maddox.
Historian Karcheik Sims-Alvarado recounted for those gathered at a dedication Wednesday how Maddox and some of his customers brazenly chased the three Black students away with news photographers on hand.
“There was no fear from him of the cameras exposing his failure to comply with the law. There was no fear of being arrested for brandishing a weapon,” said Sims-Alvarado, a professor at Morehouse College.
Maddox would later close the cafeteria rather than integrate it, and two years later, he was elected governor.
Today the restaurant is gone, replaced by a new plaza, part of Georgia Tech’s EcoCommons projects. The historical marker is made up of three stone columns and three long, wooden benches meant to honor the seminary students.
“I can picture the tables in that restaurant, the ones that were denied to people of certain skin color, where now we can all sit and reflect,” said Georgia Tech President Ángel Cabrera.
For years on campus, the site has been referred to as “the Pickrick.” But Cabrera says it’s time to move on from that name and suggested they call it “unity plaza.”
Not long after the Pickrick incident in 1964 came the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the formation of Georgia Tech’s African American Student Union.
“Today, we carry on the legacy of legends such as Dr. King and the seminary students honored here this afternoon,” said Shelbe Johnson, a Georgia Tech student and member of the group. “We encourage you to join us in taking up the mantle, helping to ensure that their legacies live on.”
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