Chain restaurants like Applebee’s are known for having eclectic decor and random crap all over the walls, but during a visit to Joe’s Crab Shack this week one Minneapolis man, Tyrone Williams, and his friend Chauntyll Allen made a startling discovery in the restaurant’s decor. Plain as day, in the assortment of photos laminated to the table they were sitting at, was an image of a black man being publicly hanged in Texas in 1895.
To make matters worse, the image was trivialized with a cartoon bubble over the man’s head reading, “All I said was I don’t like the gumbo.” Williams documented the image on his phone and later wrote the following on Facebook:
“This is on our table at Joe’s Crab Shack in Roseville, MN it’s the lynching of two black men in Groesbeck, Texas in 1895, they were accused of robbing and murdering a white man with a rock. It’s sad this is the image we have to look at in a Crab shack that has nothing to do with Texas it’s crazy how a brother can’t get a break me and Chauntyll Allen can’t get a break lol we just wanted some all you can eat Crab legs smh and now we got to go. We can’t take this anymore.”
By Thursday afternoon the NAACP and Black Lives Matter movement had gotten involved to condemn the chain for condoning such imagery in their restaurants. For its part, the Ignite Restaurant Group, which owns Joe’s Crab Shack, released a statement apologizing for the unfortunate incident, saying that they the matter very seriously, and the photo in question was immediately removed.
Let this be a cautionary tchotchkes tale for all other casual dining chains, out there. Jackalopes = good; racism = bad.
(Via Fox 9 News)