Welcome to the History Lesson. Each week, the HNIC will post a flashback from prominent events in Black  History.

This Week’s Spotlight:  The Coon Chicken Inn

The Coon Chicken Inn was a chain of three restaurants founded by Maxon Lester Graham and Adelaide Burt in 1925, which prospered until the late 1950s. The restaurant’s name stems from the ethnic slur ‘coon’, and its trademarks, literature, menus, and restaurant all featured a smiling blackface caricature of a Black porter – or, a coon. The smiling capped porter head also appeared on menus, dishes, and promotional items.

To fully comprehend the significance of the CCI logo, it is important to step back and examine the history of the ‘Coon’ caricature itself. The term coon emerged in early America as a shortening of raccoon and, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, soon became synonymous with “a sly, knowing fellow,” and, subsequently, “a Negro.” Though originally associated with white ‘backcountry folk’, the shift in the use of coon from an expression describing a country rube to a derogatory term for an African-American is connected to the introduction and instant success of the 19th century minstrel show character Zip Coon.

Though not the first blackface character in the minstrel tradition, according to cultural critic John Strausbaugh, Zip Coon became the first popular minstrel personality to represent the “black urban dandy… a nigger who acts white.” For whites who feared job competition once slavery ended, the Zip character served as a symbol of “the terror that lower-class whites had of being left at the bottom if niggers like Zip got too uppity.” On stage, Zip Coon would act like a braggart and a fool, eliciting laughter and fascination while reinforcing white supremacy and hostility toward African-Americans.

The representation of Blacks as servile dependents flourished in American advertising and in the ‘trinket market’ of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Aunt Jemima, the character behind the ready-made pancake, was sold to a receptive American market in 1889 and with her came a proliferation of advertisements and collectibles featuring the Mammy, the simple, ever-faithful slave woman who cooked, supervised other house slaves, watched the children, and completed countless additional tasks.

‘Uncle Tom’, originally a character in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, became another popular stereotype who, like Mammy, submissively and contentedly served the ‘massa’ and was willing to sell out the field negro in order to continue to serve him.

Sambo, Uncle Ben, Rastus (the Black man on the Cream of Wheat box), Jim Crow, Pickaninny, and Jezebel are further examples of black stereotypes used to sell anything from soap to tobacco and who appeared as objects as diverse as rag dolls and salt and pepper shakers. And of course, the Coon remained an ever-popular stereotype prominent throughout the United States.

Today, Coon Chicken Inn items are part of the genre of racist art. Memorabilia may be collectible, and knockoff and novelty items using Coon Chicken Inn logos are often available on Internet trade and auction sites.

The franchise is referenced in the 2001 cult film Ghost World, as well as the 2004 mockumentary C.S.A.: Confederate States of America.