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• Coleman’s idea centered around the history of African-Americans packing meals in shoeboxes during the Jim Crow era when they were banned from and refused service in white-owned restaurants. The decorative boxes pay tribute to African-American trailblazers and raise awareness by including information about Freedom Riders and the Green Book, a guide that instructed black travelers on where to find safe havens throughout the deeply-segregated ’60s South.   
• Part of the proceeds go to Detroit community development & youth education programs.

“It’s important that a younger generation understand the strength and determination that their forebears had to persevere through what we now consider normal day-to-day living. Despite the indignities of the era, black Americans found a way through resourcefulness as well as resolve.”

— Patrick Coleman

Source: Ebony, Fox Detroit

• Coleman’s idea centered around the history of African-Americans packing meals in shoeboxes during the Jim Crow era when they were banned from and refused service in white-owned restaurants. The decorative boxes pay tribute to African-American trailblazers and raise awareness by including information about Freedom Riders and the Green Book, a guide that instructed black travelers on where to find safe havens throughout the deeply-segregated ’60s South.   
• Part of the proceeds go to Detroit community development & youth education programs.

“It’s important that a younger generation understand the strength and determination that their forebears had to persevere through what we now consider normal day-to-day living. Despite the indignities of the era, black Americans found a way through resourcefulness as well as resolve.”

— Patrick Coleman

Source: Ebony, Fox Detroit

Larry & Jereline Bethune:

• The Bethune’s restaurant, Brenda’s Bar-B-Que Pit, served as the unofficial center for Montgomery, Alabama’s Civil Rights Movement; holding meetings with NAACP leaders and organizing and promoting boycotts, including Rosa Parks’ infamous Bus Boycott.
• Jereline Bethune quietly held lessons to teach African-Americans to read so they could pass the literacy test (a way to suppress the black vote during the height of the Jim Crow era.
• Jereline also participated in the Selma to Montgomery March that led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

“Let’s learn how to read. Let’s learn how to vote. Let’s go after our own rights so we never have to be treated in a way that we’re not equal to again.”  

— Donetta Bethune

Granddaughter of Larry & Jereline Bethune

Source: AL.com

• During the Civil Rights Movement, Dooky Chase’s was the only upscale restaurant where African-Americans could dine. There, restaurant owner Leah Chase fed Freedom Riders and hosted meetings for the Association for the Advancement of Colored People. 
• Princess Tiana, from Disney’s The Princess and the Frog, was based on Leah’s life and was the 1st African-American princess in a Disney movie. Leah is considered to be of “a generation of African-American women who set their faces against the wind without looking back”, as quoted by Jessica B. Harris, author and expert on food of the African Diaspora.
• Beyond her countless culinary awards, Leah has been recognized by the NAACP receiving the Weiss Award & Torch of Liberty Award. Other recognitions include University of New Orleans’ Entrepreneurship Award & the Outstanding Woman Award from the National Council of Negro Women. Leah, along with 75 women of color, were featured in “I Dream a World: Portraits of Black Women Who Changed America.”

“In my dining room, we changed the course of America over a bowl of gumbo and some fried chicken.”

— Leah Chase

Source: NYTimes, African American Chef’s Hall of Fame

Zephyr Wright:

• Zephyr Wright began her culinary career in 1940 to help pay her tuition at Wiley College located in Texas where she received her degree in Home Economics. Once hired by the Johnson Family, she became a personal advisor to Lady Bird & LBJ on all civil rights & equality topics.
• Wright and her husband’s accounts of racial injustice were said to be a key factor in President Johnson’s signing and adoption of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. So much so, that LBJ gifted her the pen used, saying, “You deserve this more than anybody else.”
• When asked to accompany (then) Senator LBJ back to Texas:

“I’m not going to do it…I’m not allowed to go to the bathroom…we can’t go into restaurants…Not until there’s change.”

— Zephyr Wright

Source: New York Times