‘The Coon Chicken Inn’: Restaurant faces backlash after displaying a racist sign

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A restaurant in Texas has been called racist after putting up a sign that refers to black people as “coons” and shows a blackface caricature.

The sign has a cartoonish blackface with “Coon Chicken Inn” written on the grinning mouth. A photo of the sign has gone viral on social media with many who have seen it calling it “racist” and “infuriating.”

To hear Cook’s Garage in Lubbock, Texas, say it, the offensive sign is a “part of history.” The restaurant has other vintage signs up as part of their look and has stated that there was no racist intent.

In a now-deleted Facebook post, they defended themselves saying, “Aunt Jemima, mammies, and lots of other black collectibles are highly sought after, as is Americana collectibles with white characters.”

They went on, “The Coon Chicken Inn was an actual restaurant started in the 20’s. Again, we want to stress we do not intend to offend anyone, and are only preserving a part of history that should remind us all of the senselessness of racial prejudice.”

Jasmine Abdullah, a Lubbock resident, said she saw a post of the sign on one of her friend’s pages on the internet.

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“I was reading the comments, I saw the sign, and I immediately got infuriated,” Abdullah stated. “Because I was thinking, ‘In this day and age, we are still having to deal with things like this? … If we want to be remembered as a group of people, that is not how we want to be remembered. If you want to put a piece of American history or African-American history up, there are tons of people you can have hanging up in your restaurant. Not something derogatory.”

She reached out to Cook’s Garage to ask them to take the sign down and has not gotten a response. The restaurant has also refused to comment to the media as to whether they have left the sign up.

“It was a piece of history in the 20s. This is not the 1920s,” Abdullah said in response to the Facebook post. “If they did their history before responding, they would know that restaurant was closed down for that particular reason, for the racial epithets it basically stood on.”