Watts Restaurant and Grill

Watts Restaurant and Grill was a former restaurant operating in Chapel Hill, Orange County, North Carolina throughout the 1950s and 60s.

Origin
Watts Restaurant was founded in the early 1950s by Austin and Jeppie Watts.

Rise and Expansion
In the 1950s and 1960s, Watts Grill became a preferred venue for fraternities and organizations at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as well as the KKK. Despite their growing popularity, Austin and Jeppie Watts remained adamant in their ways, refusing to serve any Black clientele.

Background
In the 1960s, Chapel Hill was a small college town in the midst of the civil rights movement. While the town had a reputation for being liberal, about a quarter of Chapel Hill's institutions were still segregated. In 1963, sit-in campaigns were organized all around the town to attempt to convince the local businesses to integrate. These events led to 1500 arrests in Chapel Hill alone.

The Sit-ins
On January 2, a group of six people entered the restaurant, wanting to be served food. However, when the owners refused to serve them, the protestors decided to lay down on the floor. One of the protestors included Lou Calhoun, a white senior at the University of North Carolina. When he refused to leave the restaurant, Jeppie Watts decided to urinate on him. The police were called and all of the demonstrators were arrested for trespassing.

The prior incident was followed by another attempt at a sit-in protest by eleven UNC and Duke professors. The Duke professors included Peter Klopfer and David Smith as well as three members of the religion department. Among the professors from UNC were William Wynn and Albert Amon, who arrived at Watts "determined to be arrested." The group did not enter Watt's, as they were stopped in the parking lot by restaurant staff. They were sprayed with hoses and beaten before the police department arrived and arrested them for trespassing.

Throughout the spring of that year, trials were held for many of the demonstrators involved in the sit-ins. Several protestors were found guilty of criminal trespass and sentenced to several months in jail. The severity of the sentences of the demonstrators were later reduced by Terry Sanford.

Goals of the Protests
The sit-ins at Watts Restaurant were part of a broader movement in the town of Chapel Hill. Each of the individual demonstrations at Watts caused an outrage from multiple newspapers across the entire state of North Carolina.

Desegregation
After Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on July 2, 1964, Austin and Jeppie Watts still refused to desegregate their establishment.