Gilbert Gray & the Silver Dollar Saloon Sit-In

Six men sit at a counter on the left side. On the right side, a man is serving them. — Silver Dollar Saloon on Fourth Street was the scene of a sit-in, May 1962. View in our Digital Collection.

The bar was the Silver Dollar …. The seven-year-old chapter of the NAACP in Santa Rosa had received complaints that the owner consistently refused to serve blacks. Willie Mack Miller was the first to file a formal complaint.

— LeBaron, Gaye. “Sit-ins and ‘Boat Rocking’ — Black History in the 1960s.” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, January 19, 1986.

The ‘sit-in’ was brief. One man ordered a beer. Another ordered a shot of whiskey. ‘I'm sorry, boys,’ said the tavern owner, ‘You've had too much already.’
‘Too much!’ says Gilbert Gray, still smarting at the memory. ‘We'd just left church!’ The NAACP filed suit, which was settled out of court. The money wasn't much, but as Gray recalls: ‘We made our point. We dropped in at the Silver Dollar for a drink pretty regular after that. We kept him honest.’

— LeBaron, Gaye. “Sit-ins and ‘Boat Rocking’ — Black History in the 1960s.” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, January 19, 1986.

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