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Civil Rights Kitchen to Face Wrecking Ball
A T L A N T A, Aug. 2 -- — When black students in Atlanta marched against segregation, walked into "whites only" restaurants, were arrested for it and paid their bail, they often then made their way to the restaurant of James and Robert Paschal.
"My brother and I would keep the restaurant open all night because their families would come to Paschal's to wait until they had been released from jail," James Paschal said.
Paschal's became a safe haven for the civil rights movement, and even added a hotel to house those coming in.
Martin Luther King Jr. would plan marches, such as the one on Selma, Ala., with his colleagues in meetings at Paschal's.
"What we were talking about in the conference rooms, in the meetings, in the buzz groups, in the motel, was a future, a better future for our children than we had," said Joseph Lowery, a civil rights leader.
But on Monday, the restaurant was closed for good and faces demolition.
The decision to tear the down the restaurant and hotel has many angry, convinced an important piece of history will be lost.
"Until the wrecking ball hits this building, we gonna fight the good fight," one protester vowed before the restaurant closed.
Black History or Black University?
It may not be so simple. A nearby university, a black university, owns Paschal's now, and wants to build a dormitory for black students currently unhappily housed in the old Paschal Hotel.
"The plumbing is in very, very bad shape," said Walter Broadnax, president of Clark Atlanta College. "We have floods often during the academic year so kids are flooded out because the pipes break."
Keeping Paschal's running costs the university half a million a dollars a year.
"It's a luxury we cannot afford," Broadnax said.
Broadnax believes King would care more about black students than black history. Lowery is in agreement.
"I think the enrichment of the future for our young people has to take a little priority over preserving the wholeness of the past," Lowery said. "I think we can do a little of both."
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