Ego Brown, a black Washington shoeshine entrepreneur who besides shining shoes himself, also provided homeless people with clean clothes and training in the Ego Shine method, was shut down when the city decided to enforce an 80-year-old Jim Crow law forbidding shoe shining on the street. Barry Goldstein of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, commenting on the group's unwillingness to champion his cause, said the freedom to shine shoes reflected "the 19th century, not the future."

†