Reporter: Pruitt, John.

In this WSB newsfilm clip from November 27, 1968, an unidentified spokesperson from Buehler's Super Markets, a grocery store chain with four stores in Atlanta, describes the hiring and management practices of the company to three reporters. The interview is conducted at a cash register inside of a grocery store, presumably Buehler's. The spokesperson reports "out of our seventy-one employees, fifty-three of them are negroes, we have several assistant managers who are negroes, and we are placing one as store manager at 90 Broad Street as of December the first." The clip jumps, truncating a question posed by an African American reporter who asks the Buehler's spokesperson to account for why there are African Americans who "have never been in the retirement home." The spokesperson responds that, based on the information he has received from the trustees who operate the retirement home, "there were very few black people whom ever made application to make this their home." He is cut off in mid-sentence by another jump in the clip. The next section of the clip has no audio track; it shows the Buehler's spokesperson and a reporter filmed from behind, while WSB reporter John Pruitt, listening intently, is filmed from the front.

On November 27, 1968, executives of Buehler's Super Markets dropped a one million dollar lawsuit against the Concerned Clergymen of Atlanta. The lawsuit charged the organization with attempting to extort fifty thousand dollars in donations on an annual basis from the supermarket chain. The suit was brought in response to demonstrations organized by the Concerned Clergymen of Atlanta, who challenged the employment practices, wage scale, and the price and quality of the goods sold at Buehler's. An additional complaint that fueled the demonstrations was that Buehler's also held interests in a retirement home in Peoria, Illinois that was not integrated.

The Concerned Clergymen of Atlanta rejected ever having made such a request to Buehler's management; the group noted that an individual clergyman had suggested that fifty thousand dollars a year be donated to local Atlanta charities, but that the suggestion was not accepted by other members of the organization. Furthermore, a proposal had never been presented to anyone from Buehler's. An agreement was reached between the two parties when Buehler's management pledged to make improvements in their stores and to recommend integration of the retirement home in Illinois.

Title supplied by cataloger.

The Civil Rights Digital Library received support from a National Leadership Grant for Libraries awarded to the University of Georgia by the Institute of Museum and Library Services for digital conversion and description of the WSB-TV Newsfilm Collection.

1 clip (about 1 min.): color, sound ; 16 mm.

Original found in the WSB-TV newsfilm collection.

WSB-TV newsfilm clip of a man talking about the low number of African Americans in a retirement community, Atlanta, Georgia, 1968 November 27, WSB-TV newsfilm collection, reel 1509, 00:00/01:00, Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection, The University of Georgia Libraries, Athens, Ga, as presented in the Digital Library of Georgia.

Forms part of: Civil Rights Digital Library.