Dockum sit-in memorial designs to be unveiled Saturday at gala

The design for a memorial honoring the 1958 Dockum Drugstore lunch counter sit-in will be unveiled Saturday night at the Kansas African American Museum’s Trailblazers Gala.

The event will be at the Hyatt Regency Wichita.

The Kansas Health Foundation pledged $50,000 last fall to recognize the nation’s first successful, student-led sit-in.

The sit-in was in downtown Wichita.

“This act of courage in 1958 is the perfect example of what can happen when a group of committed individuals speaks out for what is right,” said Steve Coen, KHF President and CEO in a prepared news release. “We can never forget this pivotal event. It is far past time to develop some type of permanent exhibit in this community.”

Late in the summer of 1958, members of the youth chapter of the NAACP staged a sit-in at the lunch counter at the Dockum Drug Store on the southeast corner of Douglas and Broadway. Their nonviolent effort resulted in Dockum and eventually other stores across the state providing seated service for black people.

It also sparked similar demonstrations in Oklahoma City in 1959 and several others before the well-known Greensboro, N.C., sit-in took place in 1960.

A pair of Kansas artists, Ella Baccus and Carson Norton, created the memorial design. Organizers hope the memorial will stand at the old site of the Dockum Rexall Drugstore, on the southeast corner of Douglas and Broadway, where the Ambassador Hotel stands today.

After the unveiling Saturday, the design will be presented to the Wichita Design Council and the Wichita City Council for approval.

“This monument will inspire generations of people,” said Mark McCormick, the museum’s executive director.

McCormick said he was grateful to the Kansas Health Foundation and also to the group of National Association for the Advancement of Colored People youth who prompted the sit-in in 1958. The Wichita Branch NAACP was led by Carol Parks Hahn and the late Ron Walters over the objections of national NAACP officials who considered the protest too dangerous for children.

The young people persisted, and Dockum’s owner ultimately relented.

Chester Lewis, then Wichita Branch NAACP president, pressed Rexall corporate officials to lift discriminatory practices at other Wichita stores and at stores across Kansas.

This story was originally published October 18, 2017 at 12:08 PM with the headline "Dockum sit-in memorial designs to be unveiled Saturday at gala."