36614-4 Hooper’s Restaurant on the southwest corner of Charles and Fayette Streets ca. 1954. Taken on Fayette Street looking west. Neighborhood: Downtown.

On June 17, 1960, Hooper’s Restaurant became the focal point of Baltimore’s growing civil rights movement when a dozen African American students from Dunbar High School staged a sit-in to protest the eatery’s segregationist policies. Although the restaurant’s hostess refused to seat the group and the manager attempted to deter them by turning off the lights and air conditioning, the students defiantly sat down at the lunch counter and were soon arrested for trespassing. Lawyers for the students appealed their case (Bell v. Maryland) all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ultimately overturned the trespassing convictions and helped pave the way for passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964.

(Take photo from the southeast corner of Fayette and Charles looking west.)