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Retracing the footsteps of the civil rights movement
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FOOD FOR THE SOUL
"An army marches on its stomach.”
Comfort food,
SOUL FOOD
Down south, the African American community frequently refer to their food as “soul food”. To them, soul is the ability to survive and continue on, despite the systematic racism and discrimination that prevents them from achieving more. “Soul food” then, in every sense, feeds a revolution - it feeds the stomach as much as it does the mind.
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The Places
A cafeteria cook that was fired after supporting the bus boycott, Georgia Gilmore opened her own restaurant under King’s encouragement. An underground supper club that fed thousands of organisers from her home kitchen, it became so popular that people had to wait in line. The crowd also helped served as a cover for King and other civil rights movement leaders to hold covert meetings there.
These proceeds were put towards funding trucks and vans to help people get around during the bus boycott, and helped refresh a campaign that could have potentially faltered if it were to lack funds.
"It was like, 'Where did this money come from? It came from nowhere.'"
- On the logic behind
the club name
Gilmore also helped organise Montgomery women into the Club From Nowhere, so as to not raise suspicions by the whites. By cooking and baking foods such as cakes and pies, these women raised funds for the movement through its sales at local venues to both black and whites.
Owned by brothers Robert and James Paschal, Paschal’s was one of the few black-owned, white-tablecloth restaurants in Atlanta at that time. Serving middle and upper class African Americans, and famed for its fried chicken, it was the “number one so-called classy restaurant”.
Located near historically black colleges, it was a safe haven for black activists and key civil rights leaders to meet because it meant a place where they could strategize their next move without having to worry about whites eavesdropping. Leaders such as King, Representative John Lewis, and Atlanta mayor Andrew Young spent many meals at the restaurant doing so.
The brothers were also committed to employing as many Atlanta University Center students as they could, because the brothers knew many of them needed the money. Eventually many of these students employees would go on to join the sit-in movements.
Paschal and Paschal's Restaurant would go on to make more enduring impacts on the civil rights movement, and Paschal would eventually become fondly remembered as "a soul food legend".
“Lord, I tell you, it’s hard to even imagine black politics in Georgia without the Paschal brothers”
- Tyrone Brooks, state representative from Warrenton
The “sit-in” here happens six years after the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, on 1 February 1960. Four young black freshmen from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College walked into Woolworth’s lunch counter and ordered coffee at the "whites only" counter, and were refused service according to store policy. When asked to leave by the manager, they stayed until the store closed to protest against these discriminatory practices.
Earning the name of the “Greensboro Four”, the four set off a chain-reaction of sit-ins. They returned the next day with twenty five more students, the day after with sixty three, and the number of protesters continued to grow day-by-day.
“We walk for human dignity!"
“Segregation is morally wrong!"
“End lunch counter discrimination!"
- Messages on the boards of protestors, some of which included whites
Eventually, this movement expanded to over a hundred other cities. The chain reaction became a catalyst to other similar peaceful demonstrations, and led to the desegregation of many lunch counters - a win for those fighting for civil rights.
What this highlighted was the fact that non-violent protests could inspire major change, something Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood for, and whom the four were inspired by. This sit-in was also a contributing factor in the formation of SNCC.
