[1] On July 7, 1948, at 3:45 p.m., Edna Griffin, her infant daughter Phyllis, John Bibbs, and Leonard Hudson entered the Katz Drug Store in Des Moines, Iowa, and ordered ice cream at the lunch counter.
The Polk County Attorney's Office prosecuted the Katz manager under Iowa's only civil rights law, a criminal statute prohibiting discrimination in public accommodations.
On December 2, 1949, civil rights attorneys Charles P. Howard and Henry T. McKnight, who was head of the local NAACP Legal Redress Committee, negotiated an agreement, which successfully ended Katz's discriminatory practices.
In 1884, the Iowa General Assembly enacted a law making it a crime to deny any individual "The full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, restaurants, chophouses, eating houses, lunch counters, and all other places where refreshments are served, public conveyances, barber shops, bathhouses, theaters, and all other places of amusement," on the basis of such factors as race, religion, or ethnic background.
Prior to 1884, only Massachusetts, New York, and Kansas had enacted statutes that guaranteed African Americans and other minority groups equal opportunity in "places of public accommodation."