[3] The first project of the new agency was to build the Midtown Parking Center, a garage on the downtown block in Wilmington between 8th, Orange, 9th, and Shipley Streets.

Shortly after it opened, seven black local Chrysler workers were arrested for trespass when they staged a sit-in at the counter and refused to leave until they were served in an unsuccessful attempt to desegregate the restaurant.

Louis L. Redding, a local civil rights attorney who helped litigate Brown v. Board of Education, became involved in the dispute.

[5] Rather than appeal those arrests, he had City Councilman William H. Burton park at the garage and then go to the Eagle Coffee Shoppe, where he was refused service explicitly because he was an African American.

However, the Delaware Supreme Court overruled that decision found that Eagle Coffee Shoppe's refusal to serve black clientele was legal because of a state law, 24 Del.C.