Sadie Chandler Cole

Mrs. Cole would not abide by racial restrictions. Once, in the 1920s, she went into a lunch stand on Broadway and asked for a glass of buttermilk. The owner first refused to serve her and then told her it would cost fifty cents. They sold it to others for five cents. She proceeded to break up the man's place of business. They called the police and when he came and inquired the trouble he demanded that the proprietor serve her without extra charge. The owner changed policies and served blacks after that. Mrs. Cole along with members of the local NAACP chapter participated in a 'swim-in' at one of the segregated beaches in Los Angeles. This resulted in Manhattan Beach capitulating. The Pacific Defender stated in 1927, that Manhattan Beach would "forever remain open and free of access to the general public without restrictions."

Sadie Chandler-Cole was the daughter of Abraham Washington Chandler and Sarah Hatfield-Chandler, of Cincinnati, Ohio. Her father was one of the founders of the Mound Street Baptist Church of that city and one of the conductors of the Underground Railroad. Her mother attended the first high school for free colored people in Cincinnati, and her grandfather bought a scholarship in Oberlin College in Ohio. Her mother sang in the select choir of the Academy of Music established by abolitionists and friends of free colored people. Mrs. Chandler-Cole was given a fine education by her parents. She was especially trained as a singer and was a member of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, with whom she traveled for years. After her marriage to Thomas A Cole, (the son of James H Cole, a wealthy real estate holder), the couple relocated to Detroit, Michigan.

Mrs. Cole was a music and vocal teacher and also a social worker. She was known as a thorough race woman and has done much in Los Angeles to create favorable sentiment for the race. She was the first person to have removed an objectionable sign, "Negroes not wanted." This was many years before the activities of the NAACP. Mrs. Cole went into a lunch stand on Broadway and asked for a glace of buttermilk. They first refused to serve her and then told her it would cost fifty cents. They sold it to others for five cents. She told the writer that she was determined to break up the discrimination if she had to die, and proceeded to break up the man's place of business. They called the police and when he came and inquired the trouble he demanded that the proprietor serve her without extra charge. This was a direct opening wedge in removing objectionable signs.

Bound for Freedom: Black Los Angeles in Jim Crow America By Douglas Flamming; The Negro Trail Blazers of California: A Compilation of Records from the California Archives in the Bancroft Library at the University of California, in Berkeley; and from the diaries, old papers, and conversations of old pioneers in the State of California ...by Beasley, Delilah L. (Delilah Leontium), 1871-1934