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<\/a>By Wayne Rogers<\/em><\/p>\n Say \u201cBirmingham BBQ\u201d and the names come rolling out like smoke from a pit: Full Moon. Jim \u2018n Nick\u2019s. Bob Sykes. Carlile\u2019s. Golden Rule. Dreamland. SAW\u2019s in all its glorious forms \u2014 Juke Joint, Soul Kitchen, and beyond.<\/p>\n Birmingham barbecue means hickory-smoked pork, low and slow, where the smoke does the talking and the sauce just listens.<\/p>\n But here\u2019s something most people don\u2019t know: one Birmingham barbecue joint didn\u2019t just feed a city \u2014 it shaped restaurants across America, and helped determine who got to sit at the table in the first place.<\/p>\n Black and Whites Prohibited from Eating Together<\/strong><\/p>\n When I was born in 1962, Birmingham was one of the most segregated cities in the world. Local ordinances prohibited Black and white citizens from even eating a meal together in public without fear of arrest.<\/p>\n Local restaurants, including Ollie\u2019s Barbecue, which was then located near what is today the Shell station at 900 University Boulevard, followed the rule of Plessy v. Ferguson<\/u>, a Supreme Court case from 1896, which required that facilities for citizens of different races be \u201cseparate but equal\u201d. Here is how \u201cseparate but equal\u201d works at Ollie\u2019s:<\/p>\n Ollie\u2019s Dining Experience<\/strong><\/p>\n If a white citizen came to Ollie\u2019s to eat barbecue, they were greeted at the door by a host or hostess. They were given a menu and seated at a table. A server came from the back to take their order, but unlike most servers throughout history, the servers at Ollie\u2019s did not bring a notepad to the table.<\/p>\n Owner Ollie McClung required that his servers memorize every order, no matter how extensive rather than writing anything down. (As an aside, about three-fourths of the servers at Ollie\u2019s were Black women, many of whom had worked there for over 20 years.) The server then brought the food and drink to the table, where the white citizens enjoyed their meal while the servers refilled their glasses with as much sweet tea as they could drink.<\/p>\n If a Black citizen came to Ollie\u2019s to eat barbecue, the experience was just a little bit different. No greeting at the door except to let them know that the front entrance was closed to them. No server, with or without a notepad. No sweet tea refills while they sat in comfort at a table.<\/p>\n Instead, the Black customers of Ollie\u2019s had to go around to the back door, go into the kitchen, order their food from the cooks and either stand at the counter to eat in the kitchen, or sit at a picnic table outside the back of the restaurant.<\/p>\n Clearly \u201cseparate.\u201d But \u201cequal\u201d?<\/p>\n Supreme Court Finds Popular Barbecue Joint in Birmingham<\/strong><\/p>\n It is worth noting that Ollie\u2019s was not at all unusual in the Birmingham of the 1960\u2019s. Basically every restaurant in the City followed some form of the procedures described above. So, we all know that the Birmingham of 2026 is different. I had lunch yesterday sitting at a table with friends, one of whom was Black. If the question is why it is different now, the answer is because of what happened at Ollie\u2019s barbecue.<\/p>\n When the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed, it included, at the insistence of President Lyndon B. Johnson, a provision for equal access and treatment in \u201cpublic accommodations\u201d, such as hotels and restaurants. President Johnson knew that without such a provision, the Act would be meaningless. He knew this in part because two prior Acts of Congress, passed to ostensibly improve the lives of Black citizens in the country, had very little effect on daily life precisely because they did not<\/u> include such a provision.<\/p>\n So, when the U.S. Department of Justice went looking for a place to make the Civil Rights Act of 1964 become real, it found a popular barbecue joint in Birmingham, once frequented by Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black and his wife, called Ollie\u2019s Barbecue.<\/p>\n Ollie\u2019s Employees Vote to Reject Civil Rights Act<\/strong><\/p>\n After the Act had passed, Ollie McClung had gathered his employees together and taken a vote as to whether they thought the restaurant should comply with the provisions requiring equal access. In a shining example of how a business owner can influence the attitudes of the people whose check the owner signs, the employees of Ollie\u2019s had voted unanimously to reject the Civil Rights Act and continue business as usual. Of the thirty-six (36) employees who \u201cvoted\u201d to reject the Act, twenty-six (26) were Black.<\/p>\n Ignoring the somewhat suspicious vote of the employees, the Department of Justice, under Attorney General Edward Katzenbach insisted that Ollie\u2019s comply with the dictates of the Civil Rights Act. At trial, Ollie McClung\u2019s lawyers argued that because Ollie\u2019s was not near an Interstate highway (I-65 having not yet been built at that time), and because most of the food sold at Ollie came from Alabama, the restaurant was not engaged in \u201cinterstate commerce\u201d. The Civil Rights Act had been passed largely as a means of regulating interstate commerce, as Congress is authorized to do by Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution. Ollie\u2019s argued that they were engaged solely in \u201cintrastate\u201d commerce, and thus not subject to regulation by Congress.<\/p>\n The Supreme Court Decision that Changed Everything<\/strong><\/p>\n Fortunately for all Americans, the Supreme Court saw things differently. The Court held (although in much more high-falutin language) roughly as follows: suppose I (Wayne Rogers) wake up one beautiful Saturday morning in Atlanta, Georgia and decide I\u2019m going to drive over to Oxford, Mississippi for the weekend, maybe to go to a football game. As I am passing through Birmingham, I remember that wonderful barbecue place over on the Southside with those famous servers who can\u2019t write down your order. I walk in the front door of Ollie\u2019s and have a wonderful experience eating barbecue and drinking sweet tea to my heart\u2019s content.<\/p>\n On that same beautiful Saturday morning, in a different (segregated) neighborhood in Atlanta another American citizen, also named Wayne Rogers, but with a different skin color, wakes up and decides that he too is going to drive over to Oxford, Mississippi for the weekend. As that Wayne comes through Birmingham, he remembers that wonderful barbecue place over on Southside with those famous servers who can\u2019t write down your order. He walks in the front door, right behind the white Wayne \u2013 and is told that he can\u2019t come in that door. He will have to go around back to the kitchen, order from the cooks, and either stand at the counter to eat or sit at a picnic table out back.<\/p>\n And what has Ollie\u2019s Barbecue just done: they have treated one citizen of Georgia differently<\/u> than another citizen of Georgia on the basis of the race of those citizens, thus violating the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution while engaging in interstate commerce.<\/p>\n For over five years, I ate barbecue at Ollie\u2019s without knowing what an important place the restaurant played in the history of the Civil Rights Movement. I imagine some of you reading this ate at Ollie\u2019s many times without ever hearing the story. But those of us who live in Birmingham must never forget.<\/p>\n The lesson of Katzenbach v. McClung<\/u>, the Supreme Court decision arising out of the way Ollie\u2019s treating its customers, remains today that the rights of all Americans were not written on any stone tablet. Our rights as American citizens, Black and white, male, and female, gay, straight, and otherwise were written in the blood of the people who fought for them. The people who marched in the streets of Birmingham, and Atlanta, and Oxford, and Thomasville, and every place in between. And if we forget this lesson for just one generation, those rights will start disappearing.<\/p>\n We live today in a better Birmingham because of the willingness of folks to fight for those rights.<\/p>\n May our children live in a better tomorrow because of our willingness to do the same.<\/p>\n Wayne Rogers has served as Executive Assistant to Jefferson County Sheriff Mark Pettway since 2019. He has practiced law in Alabama since 1988 and has represented Alabama-based small businesses in 66 of Alabama\u2019s 67 counties. He serves on the Boards for JBS Mental Health Authority, the Craig Crisis Care Center, the Addiction Prevention Coalition, and Crisis Intervention Teams International, and serves as the Program Director for YMBC of Birmingham. Wayne is\u00a0 the Democratic nominee for Alabama Secretary of State in 2026.<\/em><\/p>\n David Sher is the founder and publisher of\u00a0ComebackTown<\/strong><\/a><\/span>.\u00a0\u00a0He\u2019s past Chairman of the Birmingham Regional Chamber of Commerce (BBA), Operation New Birmingham (REV Birmingham), and the City Action Partnership (CAP).<\/em><\/p>\n