The Des Moines civil-rights leader whose 1948 drugstore protest desegregated Iowa lunch counters — years before the national movement.
Edna Griffin settled in Des Moines and became a physician's wife, activist, and businesswoman. In 1948, when the Katz Drug Store refused to serve her because she was Black, she refused to accept it.
She organized protests, sit-ins, and a boycott, and pressed charges under Iowa's civil-rights law — winning in the Iowa Supreme Court. Her stand desegregated the store years before the national sit-in movement, earning her the name “the Rosa Parks of Iowa.”
Griffin's fight advanced civil rights in Iowa decades before the wider movement, and she remained an activist for the rest of her life. Downtown Des Moines honors her with the Edna Griffin Building and a commemorative bridge.
She is celebrated as one of Iowa's foremost civil-rights figures.
The Des Moines civil-rights leader whose 1948 drugstore protest desegregated Iowa lunch counters — years before the national movement.
Edna Griffin was from Des Moines, Iowa.
1909–2000.
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