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Edna Griffin biographical information, 1998

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Edna M. Griffin Edna Griffin has been known as "the Rosa Parks of Des Moines," but maybe Rosa Parks should have been known as "the Edna Griffin of Little Rock." Seven years before Rosa Parks' celebrated refusal to move to the back of the bus in Little Rock, Arkansas, Edna Griffin sought service at the Katz drug store in downtown Des Moines, Iowa. The result was Katz was picketed by Edna Griffin and her supporters. M. C. Katz was charged with and convicted by a jury of violating Iowa's civil rights statute. The conviction was appealed to the Iowa Supreme Court, where it and the fine imposed were upheld. State v. Katz, __Iowa__, 40 N.W.2d 41 (1949). The Fisk University graduate has devoted her life to the civil rights movement. In 1963, she organized Iowans to join Dr. Martin Luther King's famous march on Washington, D.C. She also began a Des Moines chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), which supported the voter registration drive in the south. For many years, her column appeared regularly in Iowa's statewide minority publication, the Iowa Bystander, and she has also been active in peace and other human rights efforts. = Born in Kentucky in 1909, Edna Griffin grew up on a New hampshire farm and moved to Des Moines in 1947, just a year before she began to change the world forever.
 
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