The meeting lasted only an hour. But Reverend Otis Moss Jr emerged with the distinct feeling he had been disrespected.

Only three weeks remained until the Christmas holiday, and Moss had arrived at the Shillito’s department store in downtown Cincinnati with a purpose.

Rising seven floors from the corner of West Seventh and Elm, Shillito’s was the commercial heart of the Ohio city. And Christmastime was its peak season.

Year after year, pedestrians gathered under the sweeping limestone edifice to marvel at its window displays, brimming with twinkling lights and festive tableaus: animated “snow people” skating across a frozen pond, or tiny animals and elves acting out holiday scenes.

The excitement was so great that, for two years in a row, newspapers reported that the “crush of onlookers” created a “human traffic jam” on the pavement.

But amid the bustle and merrymaking, Moss and his colleagues saw a lack. It was early December 1969, and leaders in the United States civil rights movement were continuing to push for equal opportunity for Americans of all races.

At 34 years old, tall and slender with a firm gaze, Moss was the head of the local chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, one of the most prominent civil rights organisations of the age. He had worked side by side with the group’s very first president, Martin Luther King Jr.

On that frosty day in December, he had hoped to convince the head of Shillito’s and other department stores to hire Black workers across all areas of its business. It was part of a series of steps Moss and his colleagues had proposed to make the workplace more equitable.

But one job opening proved especially contentious: Would Shillito’s be willing to hire a Black man to play Santa Claus, as part of its yearly holiday meet-and-greets?

“We had that meeting, and literally we had 12 demands,” Moss, now 89, remembers. “The one that got the most attention was the Black Santa Claus.”

Learn about the civil rights history behind Black Santa Clauses with this article at Al Jazeera.