Fast food was offered to Black Americans as the solution for a variety of social ills-but the history that Chatelain lays out proves that it could never fully rise to that task. This history has been punctuated by moments of strife and of celebration, from the first MLK holidays, to racial uprisings in places like Watts and Ferguson. Thus began a long and complicated relationship between fast food and Black America.
Enter McDonald’s, which was all too eager to offer its franchise model as a path to economic prosperity. Civil rights leaders and government actors alike pointed to Black business ownership as the answer. After the civil rights wins of the mid-1960s, the country’s leaders wanted to bring economic justice to Black communities in the country’s inner cities. McDonald’s first entered Black America in 1968, in the fallout from the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. As Chatelain goes on to explain, McDonald’s has often found itself present for moments of conflict in African American history.
This is the scene Marcia Chatelain sets in the opening of her new book Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America. The restaurant was a gathering space for a community in crisis. Journalists used the restaurant’s Wi-Fi and electricity to send off their stories. In the middle of the chaos, the fluorescent golden arches of a local McDonald’s promised sanctuary: Protesters bought bottles of milk there to soothe eyes burned by tear gas. The city’s mostly Black residents flooded the streets in protest after the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown at the hands of police officer Darren Wilson. In August of 2014, all eyes were on Ferguson, Missouri. Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.
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