Des Moines civil rights landmark sold

DES MOINES — On a hot July day in 1948, Edna Griffin sat down at the lunch counter of Katz Drug Store in downtown Des Moines.

She ordered an ice cream soda, but the manager refused to serve her because she was black.

That moment ignited Des Moines' civil rights movement, and Katz Drug Store at Seventh and Locust streets became epicenter.

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Griffin and her fellow civil rights activists led sit-ins and picketed as part of months of protests. She sued the drugstore owner and ultimately won the case before the Iowa Supreme Court. The six-story building that Katz occupied was later named after Griffin.

Now, nearly seven decades later, the Griffin building has been sold to Revive Community Development, a Quad Cities-based firm that specializes in restoring historic properties.

Revive Community Development paid $1.8 million for the building last month. The firm plans to completely renovate the property, said partner John Bradley.

The first floor has space for restaurants or retailers. The second floor likely will remain office space, and the top four floors will be renovated into about 35 apartments.

Revive bought the building because of its location at the heart of downtown.

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“Seventh and Locust is a prominent corner,” he said. “We call that 'center ice' in downtown Des Moines.”

Revive does not have a timeline for the renovation. It will depend on securing historic tax credits.

The Griffin Building is the second property Revive has purchased in Des Moines. Last year, the company bought the 12-story Midland Building at Sixth Avenue and Walnut Street.

Bradley also wants to renovate the 103-year-old Midland Building, but has not finalized plans.

Built in 1885, the Griffin Building has seen better days. Several floors are empty. Tenants have left in recent years. Sarpino’s Pizzeria and Quizno’s closed after the Younkers building fire of 2014 caused major damage in the area.

The property previously had been known as the Flynn Building. The Iowa Civil Rights Commission and Roxanne Conlin, a local civil rights attorney and former Democratic nominee for governor whose husband owned the property, renamed it the Edna Griffin Building in 1998.

Bradley said the building will keep the name.

“We want to respect that heritage,” he said.

Griffin was 21 when she sat at the Katz lunch counter. She was with her 1-year-old daughter, Phyllis, and fellow activists John Bibbs and Leonard Hudson.

It was seven years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat, and 15 years before Martin Luther King Jr. immortalized the words, “I have a dream.”

The group won several victories. The owner of Katz faced criminal and civil charges, though an all-white jury awarded Griffin just $1 in the civil suit.

In 1949, the Katz Drug Store chain agreed to end its segregation policy, and in 1953 the Iowa attorney general ordered all restaurants and hotels to comply with civil rights laws.

“To see a role model like her in our past gives us reason to believe that taking a stand can be significant and can be an agent of change,” said LaNisha Cassell, deputy director of the African American Museum of Iowa. The Cedar Rapids museum features an exhibit honoring Griffin with a replica lunch counter.

Today, Griffin’s name is not widely known outside of history buffs and civil rights activists. Efforts to make her story a larger part of school history lessons have fizzled.

Griffin lived in Des Moines until she died in 2000 at age 91.

“She was a woman of extraordinary courage,” Conlin said. Remembering her legacy today "is important, because the goal of racial equality has not been reached.”

Follow Joel Aschbrenner on Twitter: @JoelAschbrenner