29 and its importance and the whole bit. And if there’s anything that King had taught us, it was that we could sit anywhere in the restaurant we wanted to sit. And, I mean, he looked at us like, you know, You can rot and freeze your ass over in hell. You know, we will serve you someplace else, but this section is for other kinds of people than you. Z: We left fuming and taking every- body’s name, just fuming. I have never, ever, ever been denied blatantly anything because of who I was, ever. You know, I knew about, you know, the discrimination that went on. My grandfather... it was segregated and segregated meant white and others, you know. So I had heard about the dis- crimination that my grandfather had to go through. But never did it happen to me. And I had never been told that I couldn’t do something or have some- thing or be somewhere or… because of who I was or the color of my skin. And I… How dare you! How dare you! E: So you walk out of there and you want to do what? Z: In the beginning when we left the restaurant we were both in agreement that we’ve got to do something. D: But we decided that we were going to talk to Gloria Allred. Gloria Allred is a very famous civil rights attorney. My intention, when I went to the attor- ney, was just to get the restaurant to stop doing it, that’s all. Having a public case was not our intent. It was a price that we had to pay. Z: Gloria Allred finally did the research and told us that we did have a case, that there was a law, a city ordinance that prohibited against discrimination on the basis of sex. D: But it was untested. Sexual prefer- ence. But it had been untested. And it basically was her call. Where essentially what she said was that it’s a very grey matter of the law here. She says, but essentially what’s more is the public consciousness-raising and benefit that could be done with this case, which was raise the issues, which wound up hap- pening, because it was an extremely public case. Z: They fought, they put ads in the paper saying basically... D: They kept taking ads out against us... Z: Saying,“We can go to jail, they can hang us by our thumbs, but we’re not going to serve two men or two women.” D: “This makes a mockery, a charade out of true romantic dining.” Z: “Gloria Allred has gone too far in leading her own parade.” Z and D: “We’ll go to jail, we’ll hang by our thumbs... but we will never serve two men or two women.” E: This isn’t the end of the story for Deborah Johnson and Zandra Rolón Amato. They never set out to test anti- discrimination laws or make history, but they did. And in part two you’ll hear how. So long! Until next time! 90 95 100 105 110 115 120 125 130 135 140 145 150 155 160