Black Diners Challenged Seattle Café’s Dual Menu Prices
A local cafe owner faces legal action for enforcing a discriminatory pricing policy against Black patrons.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
SEATTLE, Jan. 19.—A. F. Dean, proprietor of the St. Louis Waffle cafe, will have to appear in court to explain why he has one bill of fare for whites and another for colored people. The prices of the latter bill are three and four times as high as the prices at which white customers are served. Two gentlemen of color asked for the same service as that given the pale-faces and were refused. They immediately went to the county attorney and made complaint against Dean, charging him with 'refusing an equal enjoyment of public accommodations and advantages of a restaurant to citizens of the state of Washington.'
“charging him with 'refusing an equal enjoyment of public accommodations and advantages of a restaurant to citizens of the state of Washington.'”
This 1904 incident highlights a period where public accommodation laws were early battlegrounds for civil rights in Washington. The 'double pricing' scheme reflects the pervasive systemic efforts to exclude Black residents from civic and social life, a struggle for dignity and equal access that continues to echo in modern discourse on equitable treatment in private commerce.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.