DES MOINES, Iowa — On July 7, 1948, Edna Griffin sat down for an ice cream soda in downtown Des Moines. A little over a year later, she was the face of the fight for racial equality in Iowa.
John Bibbs, Leonard Hudson, Griffin and her 1-year-old daughter, Phyllis, went into Katz Drug Store at the corner of 7th and Locust streets in search of a treat that hot summer day. Instead, they were denied service due to their race and told to leave.
But they stayed put.
"She stood for a cause. She stood for humanity and stated, 'I'm not going to take this. I'm a human,'" said Dr. Negus Rudison-Imhotep, current commission chair for Des Moines Civil and Human Rights Department.
Seven years before Rosa Parks' historic refusal to move for white passengers on a Montgomery, Ala. bus, Griffin put her foot down in Iowa's capital city, risking violence and retaliation.
"This was prior to that movement," Rudison-Imhotep said. "There's no telling what the outcome could have been."
Griffin, a Fisk University graduate, filed criminal charges against the building's owner, Maurice Katz, as well as a civil suit against the Katz Drug Store.
Katz was found guilty by a jury of six white women and fined $50. He then appealed the decision to the Iowa Supreme Court, which upheld his charge in December 1949.
After a sit-in and more than a year locked in a legal battle, the court held Katz accountable for violating the civil rights of Griffin, Bibbs and Hudson that July day.
Griffin won only $1 from the case.
"In totality, she said [it] was a moral victory and, because we won the case, it wasn't about the amount of money," Rudison-Imhotep said. "But it should have been."
After the decision, lunch counters, soda fountains and restaurants in Des Moines began serving Black customers as a result of the Iowa public accommodations law.
Up until her death in 2000, activism remained a core goal for Griffin.
She founded the Iowa Chapter of the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE), helped send around 40 people to Martin Luther King Jr.'s March on Washington in 1963 and assisted on multiple progressive campaigns throughout the years.
Griffin was later inducted into the Iowa Women’s Hall of Fame in 1985 and the Iowa African-American Hall of Fame in 1998.
Nowadays, the old drug store is a Kum & Go located at 319 7th Street — and the property itself was renamed the Edna Griffin Building in 1998.
Edna Griffin Memorial Bridge and Edna Griffin Park are also named in her honor.
"Just putting her name up on a building is nice, but she needs to be in texts of the history books on the history of the state of Iowa, because she was a bonafide history maker, not just for the state, but for the entire nation. Because she stood up for what was right," Rudison-Imhotep said.
Her historic legacy was monumental, but it didn't put an end to discrimination in Des Moines, or even at the drug store itself.
"You can write a law until you get cross-eyed, but you can't change the hearts of people," Rudison-Imhotep said.
Though Iowa still has work to do, Rudison-Imhotep emphasized that Griffin's courage is something everyone needs to nurture and act on.
"If you get that clarion call to stand up and for particular calls, and you feel that it's absolutely necessary, don't hesitate," he said. "Do what you got to do. Because your life or your thoughts could make a change in society."
If you want to read more about Griffin, including her 400-page FBI file, click here to visit the University of Iowa's digital library.