The Beanery was a longtime lunch hangout across the street from Franklin High School in the Mt. Baker neighborhood of Seattle's Rainier Valley. The restaurant closed for about two months in 1968 following a boycott by Black students protesting white ownership of the restaurant. Earlier in the year the students had led the first sit-in held at a Seattle high school, which had succeeded in bringing attention to the principal's preferential treatment of a white student unpunished after an altercation with two Black students, both of whom were suspended.

In this image, two Franklin students assist behind the counter at the Beanery, Barbara Simmons, 17, and Melvis Diane Williamson, 16, a Black Panther Party member and the daughter of Gertrude Robertson (1918-), who had just purchased and reopened the business with her husband, Nathaniel Robertson, Jr. (1919-1986).

Date photograph was filed at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (date of photograph and file date may differ by a month or more): 4 November 1968

Caption information source: The Seattle Times, November 5, 1968, p. 26
Caption information source: http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/BSU_Franklin.htm
Caption information also derived from captions written by Post-Intelligencer staff.