Ikea exhibit revisits San Antonio's desegregation history
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Ikea's Black History Month exhibit is in the Swedish Restaurant. Photo: Madalyn Mendoza/Axios
More than 60 years ago, Black San Antonians started a desegregation movement at lunch counters that is now being honored with a special exhibit at the Ikea store in Live Oak.
Driving the news: Ikea is hosting a Black History Month installation showcasing photos and newspaper clippings centered on the sit-in that occurred on March 16, 1960.
Flashback: Days before the sit-in, Mary Lillian Andrews, an Incarnate Word High School student and head of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's Youth Council, wrote letters to major stores asking them to drop racist policies by March 17 or face demonstrations.
- In response, local business leaders and religious leaders agreed to desegregate dining spaces in some stores, including Woolworth, a popular Alamo Plaza department store, on March 15.
- Organizers from the Youth Council and religious groups decided to hold the sit-in the following day anyway, to further awareness of the issue.
Zoom out: The Woolworth sit-in provided a precedent for the South.
- The following week, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch published an article that San Antonio "set an example" for the region.
- Major League Baseball legend Jackie Robinson said in a New York Times story, "It is a story that should be told around the world," according to the San Antonio Conservation Society.
Details: The San Antonio African American Community Archive and Museum partnered with Ikea to produce the exhibit, which will be open throughout February.
- Cheryl Wyatt, who participated in the March 16 sit-in, attended the unveiling of the exhibit on Monday.
- Wyatt said March 16 wasn't the first time she sat at the lunch counter. She'd often challenge racism by taking a seat there, despite facing racist slurs. The young girl would leave when a waitress would threaten to call the police.
- "I never thought this would come to be. I never thought there would be (an exhibit) and that I would be here," she tells Axios.
Ikea also partnered with SAAACAM for a Juneteenth exhibit last year. Janeli Saucedo-Castrejana, loyalty manager at the store, said the culturally relevant events are organized to reflect the communities Ikea is a part of.
- "We hope the exhibit helps instill pride and foster conversations about Black History Month and its importance between customers' friends and family as they shop and enjoy a day out at Ikea Live Oak," she tells Axios.
What they're saying: Sallie Frederick, a SAAACAM board member, tells Axios the Ikea exhibit is an example of the museum's "history harvesting" work of recording oral histories of the Black community for future generations.
- "There are so many hidden stories out there and as people die off, those stories disappear," she said.
- Frederick hopes the exhibit empowers people to instill change.
- "The sit-in exhibit says you don't have to be famous, you don't have to be a politician, but you can make a difference," she said.