On the east end of the Island, a tiny, one-block area between Twenty-eighth and Twenty-ninth streets at the seawall was reserved for African American beach access. White people excluded their Black neighbors from using the Island’s restaurants, schools, and even beaches. But in the years following the Civil War and Reconstruction, as in the rest of the United States, Galveston’s African American community contended with intense segregation and racism. Galveston is the site of the original 1865 Juneteenth celebration marking the day enslaved African Americans were given the belated news of their freedom following the end of the Civil War. Courtesy of Galveston Historical Foundation Albert Fease’s Cafe, later renamed Jambalaya Cafe. Proceeds from the book will support the restoration of Rosewood Cemetery, Galveston’s first Black burial ground, which dates back to 1911. The authors are all members of the historical foundation’s African American Heritage Committee, which works to share African American history on Galveston Island. Authors Boudreaux, Alice Gatson, Ella Lewis, and Greg Samford also include recipes passed down through generations from their own families, or from those who worked at Galveston restaurants, in an attempt to keep the flavors of Galveston from that era alive. Each chapter profiles restaurateurs and chefs based on interviews and archival research. These memories of Galveston’s thriving Black community, buoyed by Black-owned diners, speakeasies, and pit stops mainly from the 1940s through the 1960s, are all captured in the book, published by the Galveston Historical Foundation earlier this year. One person I interviewed said, ‘I think he did that for us because we didn’t have anyplace to go.’” Read Next: New Book Explores the Hidden History of Black Pitmasters “There was a jukebox in there, you could get sodas and drinks. “Are you old enough to remember Happy Days? That’s the way it was,” says one of the book’s coauthors, Tommie Boudreaux. Armstrong’s Drug Store, where it cost five cents to play a favorite tune, and where people congregated after school at Central High (Central High School was Texas’s first African American high school until federal widespread school integration in 1968). In the new book Lost Restaurants of Galveston’s African American Community (American Palate), locals rhapsodize about the taste of “mouthwatering pork bones, pork chops, crispy fried chicken and scrumptious meatloaf,” “mandatory Kool-Aid,” and “delicious pound cake topped with jelly icing” at Maggie “Big Momma” Fisher’s Twilight Grill. Vintage photos show patrons relaxed, happy, and dressed to the nines, plates piled high with stuffed shrimp and jambalaya, cans and bottles of Schlitz beer strewn across tabletops in 1950s Galveston.
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