All in Food and Social Movements
The pace of the civil rights movement accelerated with the return of World War II soldiers like Medger Evers who fought in France and earned the rank of sergeant during the war. He returned to his home state of Mississippi where he went on to become Mississippi’s first NAACP field secretary setting up his office in Jackson over the top of the Big Apple Inn restaurant. Still open today, Juan “Big John” Mora (1890-1976) opened it back in 1939. Evers did not have adequate office space to hold meetings, and he would often hold them down stairs in Big John's where he would discuss civil rights organizing and protest strategies. When customers came in they liked what they
Starting in the 1920s, The New Negro Alliance’s ( NNA) movement focused on ending racist hiring and promoting nondiscriminatory practices in the food industry in the nation’s capital. William H. Hastie, who had graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Amherst College before earning a Harvard law degree, serve as one of the organization’s attorneys.
Have you ever heard of Georgia Gilmore in the context of the Montgomery bus boycott?
During the civil rights movement Dooky Chase Restaurant in New Orleans served as an important meeting place for black activist such as the Rev. Avery Alexander, Rev. A.L. Davis (SCLC), and Dr. Henry Mitchell (NAACP).
In rural Indiana when someone died, neighbors and relatives brought formal table settings including their best silver and and lots of food.
