Racism along this historic Maryland route was rampant in 1961. Then students helped ignite change.

USA TODAY’s “Seven Days of 1961” explores how sustained acts of resistance can bring about sweeping change. Throughout 1961, activists risked their lives to fight for voting rights and the integration of schools, businesses, public transit and libraries. Decades later, their work continues to shape debates over voting access, police brutality and equal rights for all.

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Joyce Barrett marched past the jukebox inside Barnes’ Drive-In, prepared to break the law.

Her eyes met those of Charles Barnes, owner of the mom-and-pop diner. She saw him take in her white skin and wavy brown hair, the sternness on his face as he sized up the group of 18 Black and white students behind her.

“We don’t want colored in here,” Barnes snapped.

Barrett and the others slid into booths and tables as Barnes snatched the phone and called the police. “I got some of them Riders in here,” he said into the receiver. “Come on, quick.”

On Nov. 11, 1961, hundreds of Black and white college students from across the Northeast flocked to Baltimore and Annapolis to conduct sit-ins, aiming to draw attention to segregated restaurants along one of the nation’s most popular travel routes. Frustrated by what they saw as a tepid federal response to the discrimination common along U.S. Route 40 in Maryland, they fanned across the region, hopping from restaurant to restaurant, angering white patrons and needling business owners who refused change.

Their campaign – along with international pressure to desegregate a route frequented by African dignitaries visiting the United Nations and Washington – would eventually push Maryland lawmakers to ban racial discrimination. Federal reforms denouncing segregation soon followed.

“It just sharpened the hypocrisy of being a ‘free country’ that didn’t allow freedom for all of its people,” said Thomas "Tim" Borstelmann, a history professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. “And that’s a huge stimulus to the civil rights reforms that are going to come – the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.”

Civil rights leaders, eager to broker a compromise with lawmakers and business owners, had tried to call off the protest days before. But the students would not be deterred.

“It was a pivotal point that made the civil rights movement international,” said John Harper, who was an 18-year-old Howard University sophomore when he took part in the Route 40 sit-ins. “And it showed that discrimination was national, not just a Deep South thing. It wasn’t just people sipping mint juleps along the Mississippi River.”

At Barnes’ Drive-In, a stone’s throw from the Maryland governor’s mansion, Barrett and her group knew the routine. Business owners had to recite Maryland’s trespass law to unwanted guests. Anyone who remained would be arrested.

Barnes approached their tables and grimly read the text from a booklet as police officers stood behind him. As he finished, he growled, “Leave here!”

Half the group scooted out of their booths and left. Barrett didn’t budge, remembering the stories of her Catholic upbringing, of trumpets blowing and Jericho’s walls coming down.

She and the remaining activists opened their Bibles and started reading.

‘That’s the way it is here’

Route 40’s most-traveled path was a 62-mile stretch of Maryland greasy spoons and roadside truck stops called the Pulaski Highway. It was a mid-journey oasis for white drivers traveling between New York City and Washington to relax, refuel and grab a bite. Black people were not welcome in the highway’s diners, cafes and motels.

But beyond the United States, the post-World War II world was changing.

Riddled with war debt, France and England faced growing resistance from long-held colonies. One by one, fledgling countries began pulling away. Senegal. Somalia. Nigeria. Seventeen African countries declared freedom in 1960 alone.

Within the United Nations, the infusion of unaligned membership upset the balance of power. For the United States and the Soviet Union, tangled in the Cold War one-upmanship of space missions and espionage, influence suddenly meant earning African support.

Then, in June 1961, the ambassador of newly independent Chad, driving from the United Nations to his embassy in Washington, pulled off Route 40 at the Bonnie Brae Diner near Edgewood, Maryland. He just wanted a cup of coffee.

American Blacks had endured Route 40 discrimination for years. But when Malick Sow was refused service, it became an international crisis.

“When I asked for coffee, the good woman said she could not serve me,” Sow told reporters at the time. “She said, ‘That’s the way it is here.’ I cannot say how I felt. I was astonished. I was so angry.”

The unnamed wife of diner owner Leroy Merritt was unapologetic.

“He looked like just an ordinary run-of-the-mill n----- to me,” she was quoted as saying. “I couldn’t tell he was an ambassador.”

Within weeks, diplomats from Niger, Cameroon and Togo were also kicked out of Route 40 restaurants. The foreign press questioned the United States’ purported commitment to liberty: In Nigeria, the Lagos Daily Times wrote, “the United States forfeits its claim to world leadership.”

“When these ambassadors started coming over, they found that Americans had this rhetoric of freedom and equality, but they found a nation that did not live up to this rhetoric,” said Renee Romano, an American history professor at Oberlin College in Ohio.

In September, President John F. Kennedy telegrammed Maryland restaurateurs and civic leaders, pressuring them to desegregate – not just for racial equality, he pleaded, but to help us beat the Soviets.

The Maryland restaurant owners resented the federal intrusion. Even if they personally opposed segregation, some said, they had to consider their wallets: The white Southern truckers who frequented their counters would not sit alongside Black people.

‘No shorts or slacks please’

As Kennedy’s efforts to desegregate Route 40 stalled, the Congress of Racial Equality, a civil rights group, turned to the nation’s blossoming student activist movement for help. That October, the group’s leaders announced a “Freedom Motorcade” that would target 70 segregated Route 40 restaurants on Nov. 11.

In Baltimore, CORE volunteers worked in a basement office outfitted with mismatched furniture and dim lighting. It was Charles Mason’s job to round up volunteers. A Social Security Administration clerk, he was tired of the slights and slurs Blacks endured – the tattered schoolbooks, the department stores he had to enter from the side door, the clothes he couldn’t try on before buying.

In the weeks before the protest, he piloted his top-down two-seater MG through the streets of Baltimore, his passenger seat heavy with leaflets.

He stopped near a market where he knew he could drop off a batch. Later would come pool halls, taverns and saloons.

The engine chugged to a halt. Mason grabbed a clutch of leaflets from the pile.

“Be A Freedom Rider! Tell your friends!” they read. “All men should wear jackets and ties. All women should wear skirts or dresses. No shorts or slacks please!”

Mason never knew whether people would show up.

Some worried about their employers’ reactions if they found out. Others feared the dangers posed by pro-segregationists.

“A lot of the crowds would become threatening,” Mason said. “It was almost like being in battle. You had teens on the line sometimes, and you didn’t want anything to happen to them.”

‘The whole world is watching’

Three days before the protest, CORE leaders made an announcement: After talks with business owners, civic groups and state leaders, half the restaurateurs had pledged to desegregate. In exchange, CORE agreed to call off the demonstration.

As news spread of the cancellation, students were livid. How could CORE settle for less than total desegregation?

“They were annoyed that the grown-ups had decided to stop. They felt they’d been double-crossed,” said historian Amy Nathan, author of the book “Round and Round Together,” about Baltimore’s anti-segregation movement.

In Baltimore, members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee seized on the discontent and untapped energy. They announced a new protest targeting segregated eateries in Baltimore and Annapolis. Plans were made to meet at Cornerstone Baptist Church in northwest Baltimore.

Nov. 11 was bright and crisp as the freedom fighters appeared, 300 Black and white faces spilling from packed cars and buses and singing songs of hope.

Deep in my heart I do believe

We shall overcome someday

Barrett, a 22-year-old Temple University graduate, arrived with a caravan of Philadelphians.