Uploaded February 2020 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Marcia Chatelain
In conversation with Brandi Thompson Summers
Hear the untold history of how fast food became one of the greatest generators of black wealth in America.
Often blamed for the rising rates of obesity and diabetes among black Americans, fast food restaurants like McDonald's have long symbolized capitalism's villainous effects on our nation's most vulnerable communities. But how did fast food restaurants so thoroughly saturate black neighborhoods in the first place? In her new book, Franchise, acclaimed historian Marcia Chatelain uncovers a surprising history of cooperation among fast food companies, black capitalists and civil rights leaders, who – in the troubled years after King's assassination – believed they had found an economic answer to the problem of racial inequality.
Marcia Chatelain, Ph.D. is a Provost's Distinguished Associate Professor of History and African American Studies at Georgetown University. She is a leading public voice on the history of race, education and food culture. The author of South Side Girls: Growing up in the Great Migration, Chatelain lives in Washington, DC.
Brandi Thompson Summers, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor of Geography and Global Metropolitan Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Her book, Black in Place: The Spatial Aesthetics of Race in a Post-Chocolate City explores how aesthetics and race converge to locate or map blackness in Washington, D.C.
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#racialinequality #economy #jccsf
Marcia Chatelain
In conversation with Brandi Thompson Summers
Hear the untold history of how fast food became one of the greatest generators of black wealth in America.
Often blamed for the rising rates of obesity and diabetes among black Americans, fast food restaurants like McDonald's have long symbolized capitalism's villainous effects on our nation's most vulnerable communities. But how did fast food restaurants so thoroughly saturate black neighborhoods in the first place? In her new book, Franchise, acclaimed historian Marcia Chatelain uncovers a surprising history of cooperation among fast food companies, black capitalists and civil rights leaders, who – in the troubled years after King's assassination – believed they had found an economic answer to the problem of racial inequality.
Marcia Chatelain, Ph.D. is a Provost's Distinguished Associate Professor of History and African American Studies at Georgetown University. She is a leading public voice on the history of race, education and food culture. The author of South Side Girls: Growing up in the Great Migration, Chatelain lives in Washington, DC.
Brandi Thompson Summers, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor of Geography and Global Metropolitan Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Her book, Black in Place: The Spatial Aesthetics of Race in a Post-Chocolate City explores how aesthetics and race converge to locate or map blackness in Washington, D.C.
To learn more about JCCSF, visit us at jccsf.org
Follow us on social media:
instagram.com/JCCSF
facebook.com/JCCSF
twitter.com/JCCSF
Subscribe to Our Channel: @Arts & Ideas at the JCCSF
#racialinequality #economy #jccsf
