The lunch he was refused
In 1935 Jackson, then a city prosecutor, went to a luncheon of a Cuyahoga County Bar Association committee in the dining room of the Hollenden Hotel at East 6th and Superior. When the meeting began, the head waiter told the chairman the hotel did not serve Black guests.
The whole committee walked out in protest, and the bar association moved its meetings elsewhere. Jackson took the hotel to court, represented by Chester K. Gillespie, the senior Black lawyer in Cleveland, and was awarded damages.
The same year, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Grovey v. Townsend that political parties could keep Black voters out of their primaries. Jackson sued anyway, and won.
In 1952 and again in 1966, the Hollenden Hotel hosted events held in his honor.
Sources differ on the award: $350 (Encyclopedia of Cleveland History) or $300 (Judge C. Ellen Connally).
Why it mattered
A city prosecutor, turned away downtown
By 1935 Jackson had served in the Ohio General Assembly and was working as an assistant police prosecutor for the City of Cleveland. He was at the Hollenden as a member of a bar association committee. The hotel still refused to serve him.
Ohio’s civil rights law, on the books since the 1880s, barred hotels and restaurants from refusing service because of race. A law like that meant little unless someone was willing to bring a case under it. Jackson was willing, and so was his lawyer.
The committee members who walked out with him matter too. They showed that fellow lawyers would stand with a Black colleague in public.
Counsel
Chester K. Gillespie
Described by Judge Connally as the dean of Cleveland’s Black lawyers, Gillespie represented Jackson against the hotel.
Same hotel, later
1952 and 1966
The Hollenden hosted events that honored Judge Jackson, in the same building where he had been refused a meal.