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one attempt to launch a test case, involving both Lillie Jackson and Charles
Houston, was made, with Houston coming to town expressly to observe Jackson
being refused service. The stores got wind of the plot, however, and the members
of the NAACP grouping got prompt, courteous service for the first time in memory.
Then on one occasion, a committee of white women was formed to help change the
minds of the store owners.

An argument frequently used by store managers was that they would
personally prefer to end Jim Crow, but, if they did, their white customers would
flock to the competition. Albert Hutzler of the posh Hutzler's Department Store
used this justification several times when confronted by NAACP activists.
Therefore, at the prompting of the NAACP, a committee of progressive white
women, including Mrs. Waxter, wife of liberal Judge Thomas J.S. Waxter, and Mrs.
Jonas Friedenwald met with Hutzler to discuss his position with him. As Juanita
Jackson Mitchell later remembered it, Hutzler told the committee that he would
consider ending Jim Crow at his store if they brought him 1,000 signatures from
white women in the wealthy northern suburbs of Green Spring and Delaney Valley
pledging continued patronage if desegregation occurred.

The committee of white women took up the task with great energy — they
were, in Mitchell's words, on "a real crusade." Numerous meetings were held, and
the requisite signatures were obtained. The committee went back to Hutzler with
the signatures, and he then raised his concern over the reaction of less affluent
women customers. So the committee went out with petitions to more middle-class
white areas. When the committee again returned to Hutzler, he balked and
suggested they go and talk to his competitors. Juanita Jackson Mitchell later
remembered tears running down the faces of Mrs. Waxter and the others because
Hutzler had "just played with them like a cat with a mouse - they were so bitterly
deceived."**'