Into the neon-lighted Cottage Inn restaurant-motel on teeming U.S. Highway 40 north of Baltimore last week walked Pedro Sanjuan, 31, assistant chief of protocol of the U.S. State Department, on a troubled mission. The day before, the inn had refused to seat and serve a Nigerian diplomat, and Nigeria had lodged a formal complaint with the U.S. Government. Sanjuan had come to ask the Cottage Inn to reconsider its segregation policy—and he was loudly rebuffed. "The hell with the United Nations and the hell with your colored diplomats!" shouted beefy, red-faced Proprietor Clarence Rosier. "I built this place with my sweat. Now you come up here with your clean shirt and pressed pants and tell me how to run my business. Go back to Washington and tell Kennedy he can feed 'em. I wouldn't have a customer left if I let them people in here." Rosier's wife cried her agreement: "They're dirty and they stink. Would you want to sleep in a bed they'd slept in?"
It is a large and unhappy part of Sanjuan's job to handle complaints about segregation from dark-skinned diplomats —and all too many of the cases in his thickening dossier bear a Route 40 address. A main auto artery between Washington and New York, Route 40 from the Delaware River south to Baltimore is a gaudy neon wilderness of eateries, sleeperies, roadside marts and drive-ins. An average 87,500 motorists travel that 48-mile stretch daily and, inevitably, many of them are riffraff of a sort no innkeeper would welcome. But in fact, the restaurant and motel signs that proclaim "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone" are addressed exclusively to Negroes —and time and again Route 40, by turning away African diplomats, has earned ill will for the U.S.
Fortnight ago, the prestige of both the White House and the State Department was brought to bear on Route 40. Sanjuan spoke to a luncheon meeting of 200 Maryland civic leaders, who had received personal invitations to the session from President Kennedy. "We pour millions into foreign aid," Sanjuan told the group. "How senseless it is to ruin this tremendous effort by refusing to serve a cup of coffee to a customer whose skin is dark."
In Washington, Under Secretary of State Chester Bowles had 20 Maryland editors to lunch, begged them to join the fight against roadside discrimination.
But Route 40's ways die hard, and last week as he toured the highway, Sanjuan could find little cause for optimism. "I have a big trade of Southern truck drivers," said one restaurant owner, "and all these boys are strictly against colored people." As long as he and his fellow businessmen feel that way, Highway 40 is going to be a troubled route.