This Day in History: The Selma to Montgomery March Begins
Led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., between 3,000 and 8,000 participants crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge from Selma to Montgomery.
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In 1947, African-American brothers James and Robert Paschall started a witty luncheonette in Atlanta’s Castleberry Hill neighborhood, and fried chicken rose to fame as the house’s favorite specialty. Within 15 years, Pascal’s Restaurant & Coffee Shop had become not only a beloved community eatery but also a supporting role in the civil rights movement.
In the years before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, this soul food restaurant was more than just sustenance. Pascal’s, not far from Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference offices, was home to civil rights figures such as King, John Lewis and Julian Bond, and a refuge for Atlanta parents waiting to be reunited with students arrested during lunch counter sit-ins.
As the civil rights movement gained momentum in the 1950s and early 1960s, Pascal’s and other black-owned restaurants played a vital role throughout the South, using food as a common thread to provide affirmation, safety, and even financial support. Like black churches and black-owned salons and barbershops, they provided gathering spaces free from the scrutiny and disdain that community members often faced in other neighborhoods.
“These restaurants threw themselves into this movement because they had the autonomy to decide what was going on under their roof,” said Bobby J. Smith, associate professor of African American studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “They were able to welcome everyone, especially those who didn’t have the opportunity to participate in other restaurant spaces.”
As a restaurant, it served as a cover for revolutionary activities, he said.
“From the outside, it looked like people were just coming together to eat gumbo and pork chops,” said Smith, author of “Food Power Politics: The Food Story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement.” “But inside, they were planning one of the most important social movements in American history: a secret network of public spaces hidden in plain sight.”
That’s why such restaurants were so important from a strategic standpoint, said Marcia Chatelain, a professor of Africana studies at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and author of “Franchising: The Golden Arches of Black America.”
“During segregation, there were few places where African Americans could eat without fear of being mistreated or harmed by other diners,” she says.
It wasn’t just the restaurant. People like Georgia Gilmore of Montgomery also embraced food as a weapon in the fight against discrimination. Gilmore, a former cook, lost his job at a white-owned restaurant after testifying in support of the 1956 Montgomery bus boycott, but started a catering business that helped feed and raise money for civil rights activists in Alabama.
“She used food as a way to support her cause,” Smith said.
Meanwhile, across town, there was a steady line of people waiting for barbecued ribs and chicken at Brenda’s Barbecue Pit, and a takeout stand in Montgomery was similarly able to lend financial support to ongoing efforts.
“Brenda’s was very dynamic and very involved in the movement,” said Georgette Norman, former director of the Montgomery Rosa Parks Museum at Troy University. “Food was one way to raise money. Everybody has to eat. These days people ask you to send me a check. But back then, people cooked, people bought, people ate. Brenda’s was a part of that.”
Robert and James Pascal passed away in 1997 and 2008, respectively, but their descendants continued to run the restaurant, which reopened in 2022 in the more modern Castleberry Hill neighborhood. Its walls ooze history in the form of pasted photos of King and others who were once patrons.
Pascal’s and Brenda’s were central to the civil rights movement and are some of the few institutions that have stood the test of time. Here are some other facilities that are still open.
Dookie Chase, New Orleans
The first time Rafael Cashmere Jr. tried to go to Dookie Chase, he waited in line for two hours but couldn’t get in. It was 1959, and Cashmere had just graduated from high school in New Orleans. Dookie Chase, in the city’s Treme neighborhood, was one of the few fine dining restaurants where blacks were welcome.
“There was another high school graduation the same night,” he said.
Cashmere, who retired in 2007 after 37 years as a history professor at the University of New Orleans, recalled how a year later, as a member of the city’s youth council, he accompanied a lunch group that included high-level NAACP officials when he finally entered the famous restaurant.
Dookie Chase’s étouffée, stuffed shrimp, and jambalaya drew a steady crowd, eventually including civil rights activists such as Thurgood Marshall, A.P. Turow, and Ernest “Dutch” Morial. In the 1960s, Dr. King met with Freedom Riders in a private dining room on the second floor to plan and strategize as the movement heated up.
Cashmere was one of the young activists who took part in the rally there.
“(Chef) Leah (Chase) will serve us herself,” he said. “There weren’t many places where black and white activists could come together.”
In 1941, jazz trumpeter Edgar “Dookie” Chase Jr. took over his father’s late-night po’ boy sandwich stand, and soon his wife, Leah, began introducing Creole dishes to the menu. When the couple transformed the place into a sit-down restaurant with linen tablecloths, Leah Chase became chef in 1952 and eventually earned the acclaim as the “Queen of Creole Cuisine.”
Notable black music artists such as Duke Ellington, Sarah Vaughan, and Cab Calloway, unable to patronize other establishments, stopped by after Dookie Chase’s performance.
“Dookie Chase was an upscale restaurant and one of the first black-owned restaurants of its kind in the United States,” said Smith, of the University of Illinois. “Leah Chase had worked in places like that in New Orleans and wanted to give Black people a space where they could experience a different level of dining that was rooted in their cultural food culture. She wanted them to know that they mattered.”
For civil rights activists, the upstairs room became a place to eat and recharge, “a space where people could gather and organize or just catch their breath,” Smith said. “The Situation Room has become, so to speak, a space where we can have conversations over a meal about what we need to do to change the trajectory of our nation.”
Four Way Grill (Memphis)
In the summer of 2022, California chef Jeff Davis traveled to Tennessee with his mother, visiting friends and civil rights landmarks in Nashville and Memphis, while enjoying innovative lunches at what is now simply called Four Way.
At the time, Davis was preparing to reimagine and open Badel, the soul food restaurant he owns in Oakland, California, and wanted to see what other restaurants were doing.
Four Way, a modest stone building minutes from the Stax Museum of American Soul Music in Memphis’ Soulsville neighborhood, was on his list. His expectations were low as he had been disappointed in most places he had visited, but this experience surprised him.
“It’s pretty powerful to be there, given the atmosphere of history that the place has,” Davis said. “The food was phenomenal, really vibrant, delicious and comforting.”
Eileen and Clint Cleaves opened what was then Four Way Grill in 1946. This Southern culinary mecca drew a concentrated clientele, with Stax musicians sometimes entering through the back door to avoid attention. During the civil rights movement, activist leaders such as Dr. King, Jesse Jackson, and Al Sharpton discussed strategy over meals of fried chicken and vegetables.
Davis said she actually got emotional with her mother while enjoying a four-way lunch that opened a vault of memories: fried chicken, braised neck bones, lima beans, macaroni and cheese, and cornbread.
“Some of the dishes tasted similar to what we had when we were young, at home or in the homes of deceased family members,” he says. “In that sense, it was nutritious.”
Davis said that experience influenced the menu at Badel.
“The simplicity of it really stuck with me,” he said. “We’re a little fancier, but some of the dishes there are things I remember from when I was a kid. Going to Four-Way has given me real confidence to say: We’re going to make steamed cabbage, and we’re going to make it straight up. We don’t need any garnishes. All we need is the best cabbage we can find. Having that homey element is really special.”
Big Apple Inn (Jackson)
During the 1950s and early 1960s, Farish Street was the heart of Jackson, Mississippi’s black community, a thriving center of entertainment and economic activity that defied the pressures of racial segregation.
“It was one of the only places black people could go out and socialize,” said Smith, of the University of Illinois. “There’s a level of racism that people know and see in New Orleans, but you can feel it in Mississippi as well.”
It was on Farish Street that Juan “Big John” Mora, a Mexico City native who arrived in Jackson after hopping trains across the United States in search of work, opened a tamale stand connected to a brick-and-mortar restaurant called the Big Apple Inn in 1939.
By 1952, the Big Apple Inn had moved to a two-story building across the street, and Mora’s tamales were gaining attention, along with smoked sausage and pig ear sandwiches. Civil rights activist Medgar Evers, who had an office on the second floor, began holding rallies in a restaurant downstairs.
The fact that the Big Apple was owned by Maura and his black wife provided activists with a rare level of protection.
“Many of these independent business owners were not necessarily immune to economic retaliation, but the families that ran the restaurants were typically better off financially and able to take more political risks,” said Chatelain of the University of Pennsylvania. “Maybe they were more mobile-friendly because they were the bosses of their own businesses.”
The Big Apple is now run by Maura’s great-grandson, Geno Lee, and its menu has changed little since then, with patrons still stopping by for “smoke” and “ears,” and tamales made according to Maura’s own recipes, but now with turkey instead of beef.
Davis, the Oakland chef, said restaurant owners who have hosted or enabled civil rights efforts “have been very brave to make their spaces their home. There’s a bit of a revolutionary spirit in entrepreneurship, and that’s compounded by their willingness to take risks.”
He said such restaurants help nurture the soul because everyone needs to eat.
“Restaurants are places where people gather,” Davis said. “Everyone is fulfilled and happy. When you’re talking about difficult things, it’s good to be comforted alongside that.”
USA TODAY Network reporter Todd A. Price contributed to this article.
