The national headlines in August 1963 heralded the March on Washington, made famous by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s riveting speech from the Lincoln Memorial.
On Aug. 26, two days before the march, the Post-Dispatch also ran a short story on Page 5 noting that the Committee of Racial Equality, a local civil-rights group, wanted five local banks to hire more blacks. CORE leaders said they would picket Jefferson Bank & Trust Co., then at 2600 Washington Boulevard, unless demands were met.
CORE was inspired by sit-ins Aug. 12 at First National Bank in East ºüÀêÊÓƵ and heartened by the national march. Bankers rejected the demand as “just another form of discrimination.†Jefferson Bank quickly won a restraining order in ºüÀêÊÓƵ Circuit Court barring disruptions and threatening nine CORE leaders with arrest.
On Friday, Aug. 30, about 100 people were picketing outside the bank when 50 rushed into the lobby and blocked tellers’ windows. Others locked arms outside the front door.
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The nine leaders briefly went to city jail. Protests, arrests and court hearings continued for months. “Jefferson Bank†became the signal event of . Many of its leaders rose to prominence in public service.
After World War II, ºüÀêÊÓƵ still practiced what has been called “polite racism.†and shared public transit with whites. But they went to separate lunch counters and schools, and were limited in where they could live.
A major step forward in the local civil-rights movement had been a rally of 9,000 people at the Municipal (Kiel) Auditorium in August 1942, a gathering that . Two summers later, in the downtown department stores. The restaurants closed for the day. Newspapers made little note of it.
City-owned Kiel allowed integrated audiences, but most theaters didn’t. In 1946, activists began , which restricted blacks to the top balcony. The owners didn’t relent for six years.
In 1954, black members of the Board of Aldermen filed bills to integrate lunch counters and other public places. Nothing got passed. In 1959, young protesters, including Alderman (and future congressman) William L. Clay, revived the lunch-counter sit-ins. Clay was among those arrested at the Howard Johnson’s, 3501 North Kingshighway.
Restaurants eventually relented. .
Action moved back to jobs. In 1963, CORE said blacks held only 270 of the 5,200 positions in major city banks, mostly in maintenance. When the banks offered a nine-point plan to consider qualified blacks, CORE chairman Robert Curtis said, “Promises haven’t got us anywhere.â€
Picketing, sit-ins and arrests continued for weeks. Protesters blocked police vehicles filled with their arrested brethren. Jefferson Bank executive vice president Joseph McConnell muttered, “When aldermen and ministers and physicians picket your bank and block police vehicles, we wonder what our society is coming to.â€
When 19 protesters were sentenced in late October, supporters held noisy rallies outside the jail on 14th Street. By March, Jefferson Bank had hired six blacks for clerical jobs. After lengthy appeals, the last jail sentences were served in 1967.
Among those jailed, Clay, who served 105 days, went to Congress. Raymond Howard and Louis Ford were elected to the Missouri Legislature. Norman Seay, who became a university administrator, later called Jefferson Bank “the thing that opened the door for us in ºüÀêÊÓƵ.â€
Charles and Marian Oldham, partners on the picket line
Marian Oldham grew up in ºüÀêÊÓƵ, earned a master's degree from the University of Michigan and taught in city public schools. Charles Oldham grew up in Marceline, Mo., was a bomber crewman in the Pacific Theater and went to Washington University School of Law.
They met at a church card party in 1949 and began dating after meeting again on a picket line outside a department store downtown. Theirs was a standard postwar boy-meets-girl story, except that he was white and she was black.
Two years later, the Oldhams had to drive to Michigan to marry because Missouri law prohibited interracial marriage. When they bought a house in the Central West End, Marian Oldham was not present at the closing out of concern the deal would fall through if it became clear the buyers were an interracial couple.
They got involved in the local Committee of Racial Equality, the group that led the protests at Jefferson Bank. Prior to the protests, Charles Oldham was national president.
Both Oldhams served time in city jail over the bank saga.
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Afterward, they remained active in civil rights. She taught, he was a lawyer for labor unions. They had two children.
Marian Oldham served from 1977 to 1985 on the University of Missouri Board of Curators and died in 1994 at age 66. Her husband continued his law practice until shortly before he died in 2006 at 83.