Member-only story
The Intertwined History of McDonald’s and Black America
In good ways and bad, the Golden Arches have always loomed large in the African American experience
“Hands up . . .”
“Don’t shoot!”
Across the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, protesters and mourners shouted the call-and-response dirge in memory of Michael Brown Jr. For weeks, traditional news outlets and amateur digital storytellers broadcast updates on the uprising that disrupted life in the town of 21,000. Ferguson’s landmarks became familiar scenes for the millions who followed the crisis on their televisions and smartphones. But, of all the places that represented Ferguson in the public eye that summer, the McDonald’s restaurant at 9131 West Florissant best symbolized the interplay between racial justice and the marketplace in America, past and present.
The Florissant Avenue McDonald’s was both an escape from the uprising and one of its targets. On some days, the McDonald’s was a beacon. Reporters found live electrical outlets to charge their computers and Wi-Fi to send emails to their editors. Demonstrators took breaks from marching and ordered cold drinks as the daytime temperature hovered around 80 degrees. Police officers, overheated by their uniforms of domestic war, found air-conditioned relief as they awaited shift changes. At the counter, cashiers managed their regular duties while also attending to an increase in requests for bottles of milk, used to relieve the sting from the chemicals launched into the late summer sky.
Eventually, calm was restored in Ferguson, and in the recap of what happened in the St. Louis exurb, the Florissant McDonald’s was portrayed as a bright spot and an anchor for the community.
The Ferguson moment was not the first time that McDonald’s played a major role in a racial crisis. In fact, the Florissant Avenue McDonald’s — as a franchise location owned and operated by an African American businessman — is the descendant of a somewhat bizarre but incredibly powerful marriage between a fast-food behemoth and the fight for civil rights.
The roots of the contemporary conversation about race and fast food begins with the founding of McDonald’s in the 1940s. McDonald’s was able to…
