Denny’s Restaurant Focus Of Protest

More than 150 people demonstrated Thursday outside a Denny’s restaurant where four black women say they had to wait while white customers were seated ahead of them.

“This will not be tolerated by the black community,” said the Rev. Acen Phillips of the Mt. Gillead Baptist Church. He said the women planned to sue.

South Carolina-based Denny’s Inc. paid $46 million last year to settle a class action racial discrimination suit. In December, a dozen blacks in Chicago filed suit, saying a waitress threw menus at them and served white customers first.

Phillips and other black leaders at the demonstration said that on Saturday, Denny’s employees seated white customers before the black women who had arrived earlier. The two groups of customers argued, and all six were arrested.

The restaurant was closed during the noontime demonstration.