Victory celebration on April 18, 1964 for the Auto Row demonstrations

Medical professor contended with clergy, police as he opened up the auto and many other industries through the United SF Freedom Movement

BMWORLDWIDE–SAN FRANCISCO-A newly discovered legal document shows that Dr. T. Nathaniel Burbridge went to the U.S. Supreme Court to point out how the exclusion of African-Americans from juries compromised the equal protection of the law.

In Burbridge v. California, the leader of the San Francisco NAACP took a writ of certiori request to the U.S. Supreme Court noting that 286 Blacks were called for jury duty in the trials of the Auto Row demonstration in 1964, the largest number arrested in any civil rights demonstration nationwide, but only 10 served in juries.   Those jurors brought several hung juries.

His petition was denied although the Civil Rights Act of 1875 banned the exclusion of African-Americans from juries.

John William Templeton, founder of the Dr. T. Nathaniel Burbridge Center for Inclusive Innovation, shared the legal case during the opening of the Burbridge Center’s third annual How to Do Equity eight week series on the April 18 anniversary of the success of the Auto Row demonstration.

Part of why Burbridge is relatively unknown involves an effort to co-opt the two year movement, which led to 375 employer agreements. Several months later, Burbridge was excluded from the speakers during a 35,000 person march down Market Street including clergy and a number of national civil rights leaders until students who had been the bulk of the sit-in campaign demanded Burbridge have a speaking spot.  The day after that march, he was arrested for his role in the sit-ins and ultimately sentenced to nine months in jail.   The habeas corpus petition for him and other demonstrators wound up in the Supreme Court.

The program included remembrances from the co-leaders of the movement, Dr. Oba T’Shaka, professor emeritus of Black studies at San Francisco State University, and Tamam Tracy Moncur, a retired New Jersey elementary school teacher who was the 18-year-old leader of the Palace Hotel sit-ins a month before the Auto Row sit-ins. She also was convicted despite agreements not to prosecute the demonstrators.

To register for the How to Do Equity series, visit souloftechnology.com