COLUMN ONE : Service Still Skin-Deep for Blacks : More than 30 years after lunch counter sit-ins, a new generation of African-Americans meets bias in restaurants and public places. They file suits in a problem thought solved.

“Welcome,” said the sign over the restaurant door, but the friendly greeting was not meant for all. Certainly it did not apply to the black college students, in fur coats and pearls, dress suits and ties, who were drifting over from a nearby celebration of their homecoming for Christmas break.

The party, an annual event hosted by Howard University students, had drawn hundreds from schools as disparate as Milwaukee Area Technical Institute and Morris Brown College in Atlanta. With the festivities over, small clusters of students independently decided to cap the evening with a snack. Later, in court papers, they would each describe a reception as frosty as the weather outside.

“We’re not serving,” or “We’re closed,” the manager told each new wave of arrivals, in twos and threes and half a dozens. The place advertised that it was open 24 hours a day. They could clearly see through the windows that customers were eating. Indeed, some say they watched as new patrons were admitted.

The students recall that everyone who got inside was white. “Everybody black was hungry,” remembered Eric Lee, who was present that night.

Stephanie Houston and her companions headed home, puzzling in the car over whether their clothes had been wrong or their behavior offensive. They concluded the problem was an old one they thought their grandparents and parents had solved: The manager was just unhappy with the color of their skin.

The restaurant was an International House of Pancakes on the city’s East Side, and a federal judge in February approved a settlement requiring IHOP to pay $185,000 to make up for the December, 1991, incident. But it could just as easily have been the Buffalo Room in North Augusta, S.C., the Red Onion in Anaheim, the Glass Menagerie in Covington, Ky., or the Western Kountry Klub in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area. All have settled or lost suits in the past four years over allegations of racist differences in service.

Or it could have been a Denny’s in San Jose, Vallejo, Sacramento or San Diego, the targets of the latest accusations in a lawsuit filed last week by 32 plaintiffs. The Justice Department also says it has substantiated “discriminatory practices” at the restaurant chain. Denny’s denied its acts constituted a “pattern of racial discrimination,” but agreed to settle the Justice Department suit by beefing up its training program and reinforcing existing company policies against discrimination.

More than 30 years after the lunch counter sit-ins that launched America’s civil rights movement, complaints are mounting that a black person still can’t simply eat in the same setting as a white.

These days, the bias is generally more subtle and the struggle against it more sophisticated, say civil rights attorneys, sociologists and black restaurant patrons--or would-be patrons. They talk of special cover charges, of being forced to prepay for food, of waiting in line while whites are ushered ahead, of being refused advertised specials.

In several of the court cases, employees have stepped forward to reveal how they were directed to limit the number of blacks in an establishment; white customers have testified about owners and managers openly discussing their disinclination to serve blacks.

“I see more direct evidence of discrimination now than in the late ‘70s,” said Barry Goldstein, a civil rights attorney with the Oakland law firm that represents the private plaintiffs in the Denny’s case.

He cites three reasons: Racism is now mixed in with fear of urban crime and gangs. The recession has fueled a backlash against affirmative action programs in the workplace. And a growing black middle class is more apt to appear where whites were once the only clientele, triggering strong reactions.

These are thoughts that wound. “I carry myself in a certain manner,” said Christopher Johns, 25, who was turned away from the IHOP. “To be suspected like we robbed somebody or were violent or inmates or animals or something. . . .” He paused, eyes misting. “I thought this was over. I guess my generation has been sheltered from a lot of things.”

Precise numbers about the frequency of such encounters are hard to come by. Only nine suits charging violation of the public accommodations law have been filed by the Justice Department in the last three years, but Paul Hancock, who heads the Housing and Civil Enforcement section, says: “I doubt that number is an accurate reflection of what’s really going on.”

Jeff Prince, senior director of the National Restaurant Assn. said: “I don’t think what you’re dealing with is industrywide. They (racial incidents) are localized. We are disturbed that they are there, and that they have become so visible.”

Indeed, anecdotal evidence is easy to find.

A district manager for Denny’s in the Los Angeles area--a region not specifically named in last week’s lawsuit--gave orders three years ago that blacks should not be allowed to receive separate checks, but parties of whites should, said Tyrone Jackson, a former manager of several of the chain’s restaurants. There had been problems with patrons walking out without paying, Jackson said in an interview, but whites as well as blacks had been guilty.

Jackson, who is black, said he complained to the district manager that the policy was racist, but was told to go ahead and implement it. So he did. “It was a job, and I needed a job,” Jackson said.

A spokeswoman for Denny’s, Karen Randall, confirmed that Jackson worked for the chain and said his allegations are being investigated. “If they are substantiated, appropriate action will be taken,” she said. “This is absolutely against company policy.”

University of Florida sociologist Joseph Feagin, who is white, interviewed 350 middle-class blacks in 18 cities for a book to be published this summer. “I didn’t even ask an explicit question about public accommodations,” he said. “I thought we had at least made progress there. But people started volunteering stories.”

When he finished his survey, Feagin was astonished to discover that 90% of his subjects were certain they had been victims of racism in restaurants, as well as in hotels, motels and stores. The percentage was much higher than his figures for discrimination on the job or by police. No region of the United States was immune.

Detroit attorney Lawrence R. Walker, 36, is still seething 18 months after he and a friend were refused a seat at a downtown spot. He says he watched while a white couple was given a table in the nearly empty dining room.

“I stopped going out. Wouldn’t you?” said Dwayne Whitmore, a 31-year-old Chicago doorman who told tale after tale of shoddy treatment compared to that offered whites. His wife, he says, really misses restaurant meals.

“Please don’t think these are just paranoid blacks,” said Neicia McNeely, a mathematics major at University of Wisconsin-Madison. “This is something real.”

McNeely, 20, has battled two Milwaukee eateries. She shares in the IHOP settlement and has won a ruling and an appeal against the Omega Family Restaurant from the Equal Rights Division of the Wisconsin Department of Industry, Labor and Human Relations. Kevin Tate, a board member of the Milwaukee NAACP who has never met McNeely, has filed a separate complaint with the state against the Omega.

Growing up in a predominantly white Milwaukee suburb, Neicia McNeely seldom found prejudice in local shops. Brookfield was small enough that the townspeople all seemed to know that she was a nice, middle-class girl, the daughter of a downtown lawyer.

But when she got older and started venturing into the city more often, her experiences were different.

Blacks in Milwaukee traditionally gather after a night out at the clubs for a very late second dinner or a very early breakfast. McNeely said she occasionally was offended by shoddy treatment or what struck her as odd requirements for service, but at first did not attribute it to race.

Then, one July night in 1991 . . . but let her tell it: “My cousin and I went to a party. When we were going home, we decided to go hang out and get something to eat at the Omega first. . . . My cousin went in line while I was parking. . . . When I was walking over, I saw my cousin was at the beginning of the line. I said, ‘Great!’ I was just looking around and I saw this white man come in. He went up to the (host) and said, ‘Excuse me, how long is the wait?’

“He (the maitre d’) had his back to him at first and ignored him. Then the maitre d’ turns around and looks him up and down. A waiter is coming with two menus to seat my cousin and me. The maitre d’ walks forward and tells him to seat this man.”

An argument followed. Then, a talk with her father. Then, a formal grievance. The state awarded her attorneys’ fees and ordered the restaurant to develop a written policy which informs employees that they should not discriminate.

The Omega lost an administrative appeal of the ruling in February. The restaurant has taken its case now to the Milwaukee County Circuit Court. “That couldn’t, wouldn’t have happened,” said George Kotsonis, the Omega’s attorney. “ . . . The manager denied it categorically.”

Five months later, on the night of what was known locally as “the Howard University party,” McNeely was one of the first on the scene at the IHOP.

By the time Chris Johns and Eric Lee showed up, perhaps a dozen young women from the party were waiting for seats. A happy thought occurred to the two young men. “First thing we said, was ‘Heeeeey, we’re going to have to wait with them,’ ” Johns recalled. “But then we realized there were plenty of seats inside and started wondering why everybody was waiting.”

In court documents, attorneys for IHOP and the manager, Joe Smith, say that a group of young blacks had torn through the restaurant the previous weekend, “taking food, helping themselves to soft drinks and juice, (and) a birthday cake stored in an unused section.”

A week later, when the students from the party began to appear, IHOP attorneys wrote, 12 customers were inside and five of those were African-American.

The manager denied entry “to control the crowd,” IHOP attorneys wrote. Smith’s lawyer, Kent Novit, said in an interview: “The (previous) events caused him to fear for his safety. . . . Instead of letting the large group of young people in to destroy and mess up the restaurant, he decided he wasn’t going to let this happen again.”

Still, the students noted, they were not the same people that had caused the earlier trouble. “All we wanted to do,” Johns said, “was eat.”

Eventually, eight of the students found their way to Felmers Chaney, the president of the Milwaukee National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People. At 75, Chaney has clear memories of Southern restaurants at the height of the Jim Crow era. He has gone to side doors to collect his food, eaten behind chicken wire dividing blacks from whites, taken his meals in the kitchen.

It hurt to hear “the children” tell their tale. But he wasn’t shocked. “Nothing surprises me anymore,” he said.

Chaney referred the students to a local attorney, Patrick O. Patterson. Fifteen plaintiffs paid $50 each to retain his services in a class-action suit. They later were joined in negotiations by four others who had filed on their own.

Four of the plaintiffs objected to the $185,000 settlement on the grounds that it did not punish IHOP enough. More than 40 others have submitted claims to the court for membership in the class--most relating to the events after the Howard party. A federal magistrate is examining the claims.

The restaurant is closed now. While IHOP has admitted no wrongdoing in court, personal letters of apology have gone out from the company’s chief executive to the plaintiffs in the suit.

And Felmers Chaney will administer at least $3,000 in the new NAACP-IHOP Scholarships for African-American college students from metropolitan Milwaukee. “I’ve been wanting a scholarship fund,” Chaney said. “But what a way to get one.”

Times researchers Tracy Shryer in Chicago, Edith Stanley in Atlanta, Ann Rovin in Denver, Anna Virtue in Miami, Lianne Hart in Houston and Doug Conner in Seattle contributed to this story.