Douglas Wachter
My photographs of San Francisco Bay Area politics in the 1960s
1963--Ad Hoc Committee to End Discrimation targets Mel's Drive-in chain
In October 1963, the Mel's Drive-In chain was picketed and subjected to a sit-in by the Ad Hoc Committee to End Discrimination over the fact that while the restaurant would serve food to African Americans and hired them as cooks, they were not allowed to work “up front” where they could be seen by white customers. More than 100 protesters were arrested. The picketing ended when Harold Dobbs, a San Francisco City supervisor who had run for mayor and lost, settled with the protesters and began to allow black workers up front.
This is a photograph from Mel's Drive-in in Berkeley on Telegraph Avenue in 1963.
The protester was arrested for a sit-in inside the San Francisco Mel's Drive-in, October, 1963.
If you sat-in, got arrested and went limp, San Francisco police officers were there to carry you to the paddywagon.
Some people will do anything to get together in a paddywagon and sing protest songs.
The trip in a paddywagon ended at the San Francisco County Jail. This is Attorney Patrick "Dynamite" Hallinan, a 1962 graduate of Hastings School of Law. He went on to become a leader in the Free Speech Moment at Berkeley, directed the West Coast Mobilization against the War in Vietnam, and, along with his entire family, was arrested in the San Francisco Auto Row sit-ins.