As an homage to Black History Month, author Jeff Clemmons lectured at the Sturgis Library Wednesday, Feb. 17 on “MLK, JFK, Civil Rights and Rich’s: How an Atlanta Institution Unwittingly Ushered in a President.”
Recently Clemmons published his book “Rich’s: A Southern Institution,” so he visited Kennesaw State University to describe the butterfly effect Rich’s, a convenient store, had on the 1960 presidential election.
“It’s one small facet of a story that gets forgotten about and is actually extremely important and instrumental to how JFK got into the White House,” he said during the lecture.
According to Clemmons, Rich’s was founded in 1867 by a Jewish immigrant named Morris Rich after the Civil War. During the time of the presidential campaign, Rich’s was a chain of stores that participated in segregation. In 1960, student protesters started to rise against segregated businesses, and they wanted Martin Luther King Jr. to attract the press and draw their attention to the protests.
King was arrested along with several student protesters, and, since this was in the midst of the presidential campaign, John F. Kennedy made an effort to release King from prison to lower racial tension before the election in November.
Clemmons explained how Kennedy’s actions drew in a favored crowd after releasing King from prison. In his book, Clemmons described his encounter with Lonnie King, one of the student protestors who urged Dr. King to help them, along with others.
“In particular, it has been a privilege to converse with Lonnie and Blondean, whose courageous efforts during the Atlanta sit-in movement changed the city and helped get John F. Kennedy into the White House, ” said Clemmons in the acknowledgements of his book.
“It was interesting to see how a department store incident could be so influential in the election of a president,” said Rita Spisak, an outreach librarian and assistant professor.
In 1976, Rich’s was bought by Federated Inc. to become a division. Twenty-seven years later, Rich’s and Federated merged with Macy’s. By 2005, Rich’s was eliminated from the company name making Macy’s the stand-alone business it is known as today.
Clemmons was born in Mobile, Alabama and moved to Atlanta in 1986. Here, he obtained his degree in business administration from Reinhardt University and his creative writing degree from Georgia State University.
