These things go to the heart of what it means to be American.
In essence, cooking is an act of love.
African American eateries throughout the South gave life to the Civil Rights Movement in ways both seen and unseen.
Credit: Robbie Caponetto
Black culinary entrepreneurs realized the beauty of a simple truth: People power movements, and food powers people.
Here’s our short list of those that you shouldn’t miss when traveling through the South.
Yet the Chases were always very community minded.
Credit: Courtesy Paschal’s Restaurant
The Paschals also gave free food to protesters who had been arrested, jailed, and made bail.
Now in a downtown location,Paschal’soperates solely as a restaurant and no longer as a motel.
We also love their baked salmon and their storied peach cobbler.
Beyond dishing out barbecued chicken, Brenda’s Bar-B-Que Pit in West Montgomery served as a meeting place for NAACP organizers.Credit: Art Meripol
Nearing eight decades in business, Brenda’s is Montgomery’s oldest Black-owned barbecue restaurant.
Brenda’s support for the Civil Rights Movement runs deep in its DNA and went beyond mere sustenance.
Florida Avenue Grill
Washington, D.C.
At Florida Avenue Grill, you can sit in the booth where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. ate before the 1963 March on Washington.Credit: Ted Eytan
The menu also has a few surprises.
In its earliest days, it served as a combination restaurant, pool hall, and barbershop.
King’s assassination on April 4, 1968, didn’t end the restaurant’s connection to the movement.
Patrice Bates Thompson owns The Four Way, a popular establishment known during the civil rights era as The Four Way Grill.Credit: Alex Shansky
Samuel “Billy” Kyles was also an active local leader.
Kyles still came to the restaurant for years afterward, and people felt connected to the movement there.
Clint died in the early 1970s, and Irene died in 1998.
They renamed it The Four Way to indicate the changed ownership.
