Atlanta Motel Discrimination

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Pages: 5

Heart of Atlanta Motel was a huge, 216 room, motel in the middle of Atlanta, Georgia.
It was very well known and had advertisements throughout the state. The motel was accessible through interstate highways 75 and 85 and the state highways 23 and 41. Roughly 75% of the registered guest were from out of state. Most of those travelers were lack who were going on vacation or just traveling. Before the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Motel did not allow African
Americans were not allowed to rent a room from the motel. They were actually refused at the door. Even after the passing of the Civil Rights of 1964, they continued to refuse African
Americans. The owner, Moreton Rolleston, filed a suit in the Federal court altercating that the
Civil Rights
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Regardless of what excuses the motel head came up with, they were still disobeying the act. If the act was violating any of the American people’s rights it would not have been passed in the first place. It Is obvious that The act clearly states that any inn, hotel, motel or any establishment at all shall be entitled to fulfill the equal enjoyment to all races. In the 1960s, discrimination were very high levels in the south. In movie theaters, bus seating, diners, bathrooms and even water fountains were segregated by race. In the court case, Plessy v. Ferguson, they thought that ‘separate but equal’ would be fair, but failed to realize that if it was going to be equal, it would not be separated. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,
Rosa Parks, Thurgood Marshall, and Lyndon B. Johnson played active roles during these events.
MLK held peaceful protest and marching throughout Southern states. Rosa Parks started the
Montgomery Bus boycott. Thurgood Marshall was the first African American Supreme Court
Justice, and also the won the Brown v. Board of Education case which granted “separate
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Rolleston said that the government forcing him to rent to black patrons is involuntary servitude or in other words slavery. This is by far one of the weakest excuse I have read. How is getting paid for someone to stay in one of your rooms remotely close to slavery? The black people that would stay there most likely would not be of much trouble or none at all. Being that Africans Americans had just got equality, I do not see why African Americans could not be served just as the white people.
U.S. Congress could use the power of the Constitutions Commerce abuse to force private businesses to tolerate the Civil Rights Act of 1964. On December14, 1964, in Warren
Court, the opinion of the court was delivered by Tom Clark with agreeing opinions by Hugo
Black, William Douglas, and Arthur Goldberg. The decision was unanimous because the discrimination was affecting the interstate commerce. Justice Clark stated in his opinion, “ The power of Congress, to promote interstate commerce, also includes the power to regulate the local incidents there of, including local activities in both the states of origin and