BATON ROUGE, La. (BRPROUD) – The S.H. Kress Department Store is the latest marker on the Louisiana Civil Rights Trail. The store located on Third Street joins nine other sites on the trail. Those 10 markers have been added over the last three years.
The S.H. Kress Department Store was where students from Southern University held a sit-in on March 28, 1960. The students sat at the lunch counter in the store and were arrested by police.
The case involving the students made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court where they “stated the peaceful protests could not be prosecuted under the “disturbing the peace” law,” according to the Louisiana Office of Tourism.
“The Louisiana Civil Rights Trail marker in front of the Kress Department Store represents three downtown Baton Rouge locations where historic lunch counter sit-ins happened,” said Lieutenant Governor Billy Nungesser. “The other buildings, Sitman’s Drug Store and the Greyhound Bus Station, are no longer standing. Southern University students risked arrest and expulsion from college because of their peaceful, non-violent protests at these lunch counters.”
You can learn more about the Louisiana Civil Rights Trail here.
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