The Rich’s boycott succeeded beyond the expectations of both its supporters and opponents

Evidence

To the astonishment of both these businessmen and the old guard of black leaders, the student boycott worked. “Nobody could believe that you could get the Negroes who were trading and had accounts at Rich’s—Nobody hardly believed you could stop them,” recalled Atlanta University president Benjamin Mays. But the fall campaign against Rich’s caught fire. Soon the older generation was backing the protests it had first fought. In a telling sign of the changing climate, John Wesley Dobbs, the embodiment of the black establishment, returned his charge plates to Rich’s with an angry explanation. “I find that my Conscience and Self-Respect will no longer allow me to support a business that shows so much unfairness to its Colored Patrons,” Dobbs wrote in September 1960. — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 425

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Rich’s feared the appearance of capitulation more than the boycott itself — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 424