Hi I’m Pat Duggins. Say the words Alabama and BBQ, and what comes to mind? If you said the white sauce at Big Bob Gibson in Decatur, it’s okay, I did too. But, my guest tonight on APR notebook says BBQ in Alabama goes beyond that. In fact, the ribs and brisket to may be planning on over the summer beyond has its place in national civil right’s history. My guest tonight is Robert Moss.He wrote the book Barbecue: The History of an American Institution from University of Alabama Press. In this preview of APR Notebook, He and I discuss a 1964 case before the Supreme Court involving the Birmingham BBQ restaurant run by Ollie McClung.
ROBERT MOSS-- Yeah. So 1964 Civil Rights Act passed, um, and the first, really the first Civil Rights Act in 100 years. And so it's it, your Jim Crowe had sort of come in into in the 1870s, 1880s and got got worse and worse and worse until you had the fully segregated south. But. You know, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was all about public accommodations, which would include hotels, theaters, and in particular, restaurants, which were very heavily segregated in the south in the in the 1960s. The whole basis for the Civil Rights Act the authority it was in the Interstate Commerce Clause, in the federal government's right, constitutional duty or and right to to regulate interstate commerce. And, Ollie McClung ran Ollie's barbecue in Birmingham. Middle aged, white guy has been in his family for a while. He was actually approached by the Birmingham restaurant restaurateur Association, I think even before the Civil Rights Act passed, because they wanted a test case, they didn't want to have to desegregate their restaurants. And they picked Ollie and they picked a barbecue restaurant specifically because they felt like you would have the best case against the Civil Rights Act. It was argued that always was, you know, it was not any near any bus stations or train stations. It was, you know, there weren't track. Wasn't feeding travelers on the highway. It was in downtown Birmingham. You serve almost exclusively a local clientele. It didn't buy its meat, you know, it didn't buy all its food and everything from suppliers across the country, unlike a lot of the other Birmingham restaurants and so that was that was put forward, as you know, being unconstitutional for the federal government to force Ali to desegregate. It went through pretty quickly with the Supreme Court, I think, before 1964 was out and Katzenbach versus McClung basically said, 'No, you know, even though you're not technically, you know, next to a train station feeding a lot of interstate travelers, everything you do moves in interstate commerce. And we have the right, and Congress has the right, to pass these regulations.' And that was one of the key test cases for for for the Civil Rights Act and upholding the Civil Rights Act, and the fact there was a barbecue restaurant, and the sort of local nature of barbecue, I think, play a lot into the case. And there are a couple other test cases involved barbecue restaurants that followed in the wake of the Ollie's Katzenbach versus McClung.
PAT-- During a business trip to Atlanta, I kept hearing from people, ‘oh, go to places like the busy bee,’ because, like, it makes fried chicken, and that's where, that's where MLK would eat all the time, and it was good, but it was barbecue places where a lot of these civil rights leaders would meet and plan their protest. I mean, you had Brenda's and Montgomery, Lonnie is in Selma, MLK, Ralph Abernathy, Stokely Carmichael, all of them are eating and meeting in barbecue places, and yet that really didn't seem to make the news.
MOSS-- Yeah, I don't know why. I'm not sure if it's just because barbecue restaurants are sort of like these neighborhood Hangouts. It was a great place to gather. But yeah, Martin Luther King, Jr, and all his, all his sort of lieutenants would gather at Alex, he's Alex rib heaven. Was the name of it in Atlanta. That was sort of where they planned lots of demonstrations and planned, you know, lots of things that they were doing. But I do think it was a bit of a, you know, an oasis, if you will, where they could relax and gather and just hang out. But yeah, barbecue definitely. You mentioned ladies, mentioned Brenda's. Those were sort of gathering places during the Civil Rights Movement, and that played an intimate role in it.
PAT-- Okay, let's talk about Alabama. It seems like every time a journalist comes to the state to write about barbecue, there's one thing they're going to talk about, and it's the white sauce. And I got, I got to confess I was, I was going to try and dance around it until I read somewhere that Big Bob Gibson's in Decatur is celebrating its centennial this year. So, I'm like 'rats— I gotta talk to Robert about the white sauce.' How did Big Bob come up with this?
MOSS-- Yeah, so that is an interesting story. And when I first started writing the book, when I was I grew up in South Carolina, barbecue is much more regionalized. Even in 2000 you know, 2005 you couldn't find white sauce anywhere in the Carolinas. I never had it. I never had until I went down to Big Bob Gibson's and up in Decatur, Alabama, and I didn't know much about it, but, you know, big Bob's has already said that he invented it, and it's, from what I can tell, it's absolutely true. It's one of the few examples we have of really knowing where somebody invented a sauce and when? Yeah, big Bob Gibson was founded in 1925 and the history of that restaurant is a lot like the history of restaurants in general, which is Big Bob Gibson was a boilermaker for the element of railroad for decades. That was his career. But he started cooking barbecue in his backyard for friends. And somewhere around 1925 he started realizing that he could, you know, cook a little extra and start selling it to people the neighborhood. He sort of set up a, you know, probably just a backyard take out stand kind of thing by, uh, certainly by 1927 i. I found newspaper ads. He had set up an actual barbecue stand. It was always called a barbecue stand up through World War Two. So take out operation, very informal type of thing, you probably think a roadside stand kind of deal. By the 1930s though 1940s they became a little more permanent. And certainly after World War Two, he established a true brick and mortar restaurant, I think actually cinder block restaurant in Decatur, and started cooking somewhere in there.
PAT-- Robert Moss is author of the book "Barbecue: The History of an American institution." He’s my guest tonight on APR Notebook at 7 pm. I’ll see you then.
