In 1960 students Ezell A. Blair Jr., David Leinhail Richmond, Joseph Alfred McNeil, and Franklin Eugene McCain from North Carolina A & T started the student sit-in movement in Greensboro, North Carolina. It’s only fitting that I dedicate today’s post to that movement and one of eateries that feed African Americans before the end of segregated restaurants in that city. In Greensboro, North Carolina, Barry’s Grill was one of the most popular places in the city’s African-American community. Betty Johnson of Attalla, Alabama, briefly attended North Carolina A& T in the 1950s. I talk about places like Barry's Grill in a chapter of my book Hog and Hominy that I call Eating Jim Crow. Before the 1960 student sit-in movement at the Woolworth’s and S. H. Kress store lunch counters, fear of white hostility dissuaded her and her classmates from ever trying to enter white restaurants in downtown Greensboro. Instead, they enjoyed the fried chicken and pork chops available at black-owned Barry’s Grill. Reading about the Greensboro sit-ins gave students at other historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) the courage to face white aggression and launch similar movements throughout the south. Here are two recipes for smothered pork chops that reminds me of Barry’s Grill.
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