Stores, restaurants, hotels, bars, beauty parlors, barber shops, even doctor’s offices sometimes refused to serve Black people or Chinese, Japanese, or Filipino Americans. The Civic Unity Committee, a civil rights organization founded in 1944, documented complaints and tried to convince businesses to open their doors to everyone. By the early 1950s, the efforts of the CUC and more forceful protests by other organizations had convinced most stores to put away the “whites only” signs.