I don’t remember this myself, but it is a family story. When my mother sent me off to preschool for the first time, she told me there would be kids with black skin there. She felt the need to tell me this because, having grown up quite sheltered in Connecticut, it would be my first time seeing someone with skin that was a different color than my own. She knew I had zero filter (which in hindsight was a big part of my undiagnosed autism), so she felt it was important to give me a head’s up, as a way of telling me that even though I’d never seen this before, it was normal. Otherwise, I might have said something thoughtless out of my pure, unfiltered autistic confusion, curiosity, and desire for answers.
No doubt she was right. To this day, when I see something out of the ordinary, I tend to ask about it. It’s just that I find fewer things to be out of the ordinary at this stage in my life.
Apparently, when I came home from school, I told my mother that I hadn’t seen any black kids, but that I had seen a lot of brown ones. Yep. I’m literal-minded. I’d like to think that, too, has been tempered with age. But anyway, everyone who has ever heard that story has thought that it was really cute. It actually makes me cringe.
I was unaware of being exposed to any kind of racism as a young child. Or race in general, come to think of it. I don’t remember the subject ever coming up at all. I’m not trotting out that stupid and inaccurate statement that I didn’t see color. That’s bullshit. I just literally never saw anyone who wasn’t white before preschool, and then I saw it as a curiosity, not some sort of inferiority. Like zebras vs. horses, kind of. I was fascinated.
And because of that, when I was presented with racist things, it didn’t occur to me that they were racist, because I assumed everyone looked at race the same way I did. As a curiosity, and that no one who presented it had any agenda. It didn’t occur to me that images were meant to influence, or that messages were being sent (I still struggle to read between the lines), or that people could react emotionally to those images. To my autistic brain, there was no subtext, no symbolism, no emotion. Images were just images.
So, to me, Gone with the Wind was a lot of women in uncomfortable-looking hoop skirts and servants who were doing jobs they must have wanted, or why would they have applied for them in the first place, and people fighting for reasons I didn’t really understand that much, and a big city on fire, and rows upon rows of wounded men, and a bratty woman with an overblown sense of being better than everyone else, whom I most definitely wouldn’t want to be friends with.
In elementary school, there was one black kid in our class. They bussed him in from about an hour away. He’d let you touch his hair if you asked. I wonder what he thinks about that now. I did track him down, but we don’t know each other, and asking him would seem kind of random and weird.
So, it was really a culture shock when, at 10 years old, we moved from my sheltered existence in Connecticut to small town, rural, central Florida. I didn’t know it at the time, but my school had only desegregated 4 years previously, and now, instead of being all black, it also included a minority of whites. Another thing I didn’t know at the time was that Apopka had been a sundown town, where non-whites definitely did not want to be found out and about after sunset if they valued their lives. When I lived there, it still had extremely segregated neighborhoods. I’d be shocked if that has changed much, but I have no idea.
Another thing that was blatantly racist in Apopka that flew completely over my head was Sambo’s Restaurant. I ate there a lot. The food was good according to my young adult palate, and it was affordable. It was the closest restaurant to where we lived, and best of all, it was open 24 hours.
In the summers, my much older sisters would work late night shifts, and then they’d come get me at 2 or 3 in the morning and we’d go to Sambo’s. My mother never even realized I was gone. (I hated my existence so much that I’d stay up all night and sleep all day, all summer long. She didn’t notice that, either. Between that summer habit, and the fact that later in my life I worked graveyard shift for 14 years, staying up late and sleeping in has become a lifelong habit that I actually kind of enjoy now, but it has been a detriment to my relationships.)
I had never heard of the blatantly racist children’s story, Little Black Sambo. It’s about a black boy in India with simian-looking parents with huge lips, who were named Mumbo and Jumbo. At one point the boy is chased by tigers, and he tries to bribe them with various articles of his clothing, until he’s just left with a crude loincloth. And then for some reason the tigers eventually chase themselves around and around a tree until they turn themselves into butter, and Sambo gets his clothes back, and for some reason also sprouts more kinky hair and becomes more menacing looking. Apparently that book was very popular before my time.
The first Sambo’s Restaurant was launched in 1957, before I was born, and at the time the racist imagery was pretty blatant. Sambo being chased by tigers everywhere. The menus had entrees such as Mumbo’s Pancakes. Their advertisements said things like, “Finest pancakes west of the Congo.” Apparently white people thought this was a hoot.
The restaurant caught on, and it soon became a nationwide chain, mostly in sundown towns like Apopka. They thrived on the theory that racists could eat there secure in the knowledge that black people wouldn’t want to eat there, even though “whites only” signs were no longer allowed.
By the time I came along in the mid 70’s, the imagery was not quite as blatant. There were still tigers everywhere, and the butter was still called tiger butter, but the occasional boy graphic depicted the boy as much lighter skinned with thinner lips, and I don’t recall seeing Mumbo or Jumbo on the menu. (Although, come to think of it, if I saw jumbo, I probably would have just assumed that it meant a really large portion of something or other.)
The owners were now trying to claim the name had nothing to do with the racist books, and that actually, it was a combination of parts of their names. Even so, I don’t recall ever seeing a black customer in the place. I was so in my own little world that it didn’t even occur to me to wonder about that at the time.
By 1983, the company went bankrupt, and many of the restaurants were bought out by Dennys, which is kind of ironic, because they’ve had the reputation of making black patrons pay in advance, or, in some locations, not let them in the door at all. I was already off to college by the time the one in Apopka was bought out, and I remember feeling sad, not out of any sense of Sambo’s nostalgia, but only because I wasn’t aware that Denny’s is also open 24 hours, so my summertime life avoidance tradition could remain intact.
The last remaining Sambo’s was the original one, in Santa Barbara, California, which had been passed down to one of the grandsons, whose name was Chad Stevens. He tried to maintain the “this restaurant was never racist” story, but in 2020, after the George Floyd protests, and after yet another petition demanding that the name be changed, he finally changed the restaurant’s name to Chad’s, and it remains so-named to this day.
Sambos should not be confused with another restaurant, Lil Black Sambos, a single restaurant in Lincoln City, Oregon, of all places. This pancake restaurant proudly owned the racist children’s book’s origins. Eventually they took “Black” out of the name, but locals, including reporters, still kept it in. In 2022, the restaurant finally closed, but the owner swore that it had nothing to do with the protests and petitions demanding a name change, or declining business due to boycotts. No. It was simply “time to move on to another phase in his life.” Okay. Whatever gets you through the night.
This next restaurant is the one that made me think of writing this post in the first place. While doing research for a recent post about Seattle’s Intolerance and Protests, I stumbled upon Coon Chicken Inn. What??? This one shocked me to the very soles of my shoes.
Before these two blog posts, I pretty much assumed that blatant, extreme right, unapologetic racism was only found in the American South. That’s certainly the first place I ever crossed paths with it. So, discovering that this establishment was located just north of the Seattle city limits, and existed for 20 years, stunned me.
In order to partake of their fried chicken, you had to walk through a huge, 12 foot caricatured face of a black porter with gigantic red lips and even bigger teeth. The name of the restaurant was written on those grinning teeth, like cavities. Like rot.
Insanely, this restaurant was also a chain. It started in 1925 in Salt Lake City. The owners justified the imagery as appealing to families and children, and told reporters that “anyone who has lived below the Mason-Dixon line knows that ‘coon chicken’ is the way the fowl is cooked by the real, old-fashioned southern mammy.” And if you loved chicken but couldn’t eat a whole one, you could always order a Baby Coon Special which was a half chicken. They also served oysters, burgers, chili, ham and eggs, and desserts, and did a really booming business.
So, in 1929, a second restaurant was opened in Seattle. In 1931, a third was opened in Portland, Oregon. A fourth was supposed to be opened in Spokane, Washington, but it seems that it never did. (I wish I could find more details about the whys and wherefores of that.)
The Coon Chicken Inn was all about their brand. The grinning Black Porter logo was on every plate, utensil, and napkin. The menu was shaped like the coon head, and so was just about every promotional item in the place, including Coon Head Ash Trays, clocks, cookie jars, tire covers, postcards and matches. It was also on the sides of their cars, which made deliveries all over town (except in black neighborhoods.) You really couldn’t get away from the image once the restaurant gained a foothold.
The Salt Lake City Restaurant, at least, insisted on all black cooks and wait staff. And if the patrons hurled slurs at the staff, which they often did, the staff was supposed to simply smile back as they served up the Coon Fried Chicken. And in exchange for such abuse, the staff were treated to such unfair labor practices that in 1937, the Bartenders, Cooks, Waiters, and Waitresses Union picketed outside the Seattle restaurant for a week before reaching a settlement.
The Seattle NAACP filed a lawsuit about their logo, as well they should have, and the restaurant lost, but got away with simply changing the porter’s face from black to blue in its advertising, and cancelling a shipment of 1,000 spare tire covers. Even so, the Seattle restaurant continued to sell as much as 2 tons of chicken per day. But they had positioned themselves well to maximize their racist clientele.
The proprietors must have been very savvy about location, indeed. It can be no coincidence that their restaurant, at 8500 Lake City Way NE, was less than a block away from a restricted subdivision called Hayes Park. From 1940-1949, at least, the legal restriction, if you wanted to occupy a home in that subdivision, read as follows:
”None of said residential lots shall be rented or leased, in whole or in part, to any person not of the white race; nor shall any person not of the white race be permitted to occupy any portion of such lot or of any building thereon, except a domestic servant actually employed by a white occupant of such building.”
One of the proprietor’s grandchildren was asked to talk about his grandparent’s restaurants. He starts by saying, like many other racism apologists, that he doesn’t condone the Jim Crow attitudes of the past, but then goes on to defend his grandparents, saying they were engaging in normal business practices. He says the giant face attracted more children and families. He makes no mention of their reasoning. (They could just as easily have made it a giant chicken.) He doesn’t even address that at all. Instead, he goes on to describe which Coon Chicken Inn collectables are definitely fake, and urges collectors to avoid those. It left me feeling that even generations later, that family is still in denial.
That this outrageous restaurant thrived in Seattle for 20 years is really disheartening. I know how slowly attitudes are changing in the South, so now I wonder if the Seattle I’ve come to believe exists right now is just me being in an oblivious, liberal bubble. Because the Seattle I believe I’m living in is as different as night and day from the era of the Coon Chicken Inn.
The Seattle and Portland restaurants closed in 1949. Salt Lake City soldiered on until 1957. I was unable to determine what finally put an end to the business, but I’m really glad the building no longer exists in Seattle. I’ve probably driven by that address dozens of times. A new building stands there now. It appears to be a craft beer place with a light menu. It’s called The Growler Guys. I wonder if they are aware of their lot’s disturbing legacy. If I were them, I’d have the entire place cleansed with ritual sage. Just sayin’.
Check out this disturbing video for more details.
The only racist restaurant that I could find that is still operating is Mammy’s Cupboard in Natchez, Mississippi. If I came upon this one unexpectedly, I’d probably drive into a ditch. The 30-foot-tall building is a giant stereotypical big bosomed black mammy, carrying a tray, and wearing a kerchief and big red hoop skirt. Nowadays her skin has been lightened to the point she could almost pass for white, but originally, she was as black as any human being could be.
As much as I’d hate myself for it, I have to admit I’d struggle not to check this one out. I’m a sucker for a novelty building. I even stayed in one of those teepee motels on Route 66 once. That was awkward enough, but this one is over the top.
This place was built in 1940. The proprietors hoped it would be a starting or ending point for the annual Natchez Pilgrimages that still go on to this day. It’s an annual tour of many of the antebellum plantation homes that were, of course, run by slaves. Today, you can see them for $25 per person per home. I bet the tickets were pricey in 1940 as well, so the Mammy’s Cupboard folks were hoping to hop on that bandwagon and ride it all the way to the bank.
By all accounts, the food is actually good. In the late ‘80’s, one reporter described the place like this: “A traveler hasn’t fully experienced Mississippi unless he has been by Mammy’s Cupboard…. Like the stereotyped mammies of pre-Civil War days, she nurses chil-uns now aged into good ol’ boys and gals. They gather in her skirts every day for their fried chicken, homemade French fries and the happy hour.”
The place has a gift shop. A gift shop! It still sells racist memorabilia, such as mammy magnets, and mammy dolls. It blows my mind that this place is still up and running.
I can’t imagine what it must be like to drive past this building as an African American. If it was part of your commute, it would be like a daily slap in the face. But the building is on the National Registry of Historic Places. The only way I could justify its continued existence is if it was bought out and turned into a Museum of Racism. If it was well curated, it might be an important stop on that annual Natchez Pilgrimage, because people need to stop calling these places plantations, which sounds so romantic, and call them what they really were: Forced Labor Camps. Until we take the romance out of the Antebellum South, people will never truly know the reality of our nation’s fraught history.
I’m sure there were a lot more racist restaurants in this nation’s past, but these were the ones that stood out to me. If you want a deeper dive into why these restaurants were/are so popular, and why so many people are willing to overlook how offensive they are, check out this booklet entitled Burgers in Blackface: Anti-Black Restaurants Then and Now by Naa Oyo A. Kwate. It’s available in its entirety for free online, and doesn’t take very long to read if the subject interests you. I found it to be really well thought-out and quite eye-opening.
So there you have it. America’s refusal to disconnect blackness from servitude. But hey, it’s all in good fun, right? Right?
Additional Sources:
The Coon Chicken Inn: North Seattle’s Beacon of Bigotry
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