![]() ![]() 3 Civil rights activist Ella Baker, 1976 - Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Libraryįor some, the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed segregation at spaces of public accommodation such as restaurants, seemed like a mixed blessing. Quoted in a 1974 article in Ebony magazine about a growing trend toward vegetarianism, African American blues musician Taj Mahal labeled a hamburger “a serious vulgarity.” In making that statement, he was articulating a belief then held by many. ![]() However, by the close of the decade, many politically active African Americans regarded foods such as hamburgers as potent cultural symbols worthy of contemplation. She saw food as incidental rather than fundamental to the struggle. 2 In Baker’s formulation, southern racism was on trial. In 1960 stalwart civil rights activist Ella Baker declared that the youthful protestors who participated in the struggle for desegregation acted out of much loftier goals than the desire for a “hamburger or even a giant-sized Coke.” 1 Instead, she argued, the students who organized sit-ins at public dining venues throughout the South were concerned with nothing less than the “moral implications of racial discrimination for the ‘whole world’ and the ‘Human Race’” and not merely with their inability to fill their stomachs with an iconic food and beverage combination. ![]() Segregated lunch counters were one of the most visible sites of direct-action protest during the classical phase of the civil rights movement. ![]()
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