 Okay, I think I'd like to I think it's I think I'd like to get started I'll give people a minute to Get their seats. Hi, welcome everyone to New America. Good morning. My name is Mark Schmidt I'm a I'm with the political reform program here. I'm filling in for a we stop you the director of the fellows program at New America for this book discussion of Marsha Chattelaine's book franchise, which is We'll learn more about it, but it's it's basically about the role of McDonald's in the black community over the over the past 50-60 years Fascinating fascinating book Marsha is a class is bit was a fellow in the class of 2017 at New America, and she's the provost distinguished associate professor of history in African-American studies at Georgetown the author of Southside Girls and And Teaches about women and girls history as well as black capitalism I just just to say a couple things I I do a lot of work with the fellows program here and sometimes look at proposals and things like that My favorite things about the fellows program are when we have a project that is like you look at it You say, oh, that's a story I hadn't really thought about that much before but the window it opens is really huge and that was that's always been my reaction To this story that and you'll hear about it today Thinking about that that topic of McDonald's and black capitalism, which I'm sort of vaguely aware of it Also its relationship to the civil rights movement just opened so many windows and so many stories that help us understand the relationship between Society economic structures politics and so forth and the other thing my other favorite thing when with the fellows program is When we have fellows who really engage with this institution and who are really supportive of our colleagues and who engage with other fellows And in Marcia's case she like was very supportive to one of the staff in our program who's now in graduate school and That it's just really a thrill when you see that kind of Cross-pollination not every sometimes fellows just want to focus on their project. That's fine, too But it's really a thrill when people do that And so that's why I'm particularly excited to be doing this introduction Ted Johnson will be joining this conversation kind of fits in the same category it was a he's currently a Senior fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, which is an organization We all have worked with a lot and was also in 2017 fellow at New America Working on his book about the varieties of black political participation And I think Ted's also been you know a super engaged citizen of this organization, which we really appreciate but you know in a way that's similar to Marcia I think Reflects on the kind of the complexities of the black political and and economic experience So I'm thrilled to just I don't I got to stop talking because I just want to get the conversation going between the two of you So thank you Marcia and Ted and look forward to hearing more about the book and and the conversation that follows Hi folks, I'm so excited This is the first event For franchise and as I look into the I'm trying not to cry because so many cross sections of my life are here Some of my former students some of my beloved Truman scholars colleagues other scholars who I've learned so much from and Friends and I think that the best part of writing a book Is that when you get on the other side of it? You realize just how many people We're surrounding you at the critical moments, especially the ones that have a lot of crying involved So it's just wonderful to see so many people This is a really strange book Is where I'm going to start because I am talking about a Relationship that is kind of hidden in plain sight and that's the relationship between the deep desire of African-Americans to realize Freedom in all of its possibilities in a context that is so deeply limited and the way That's expressed through not just the food we eat at a McDonald's But its relationship to our community and I've received many questions about this book and people are often curious How did I see that link and I think about the fact that the very first time I wrote a book about the Great Migration Was in high school as part of a an all-city Black History Quiz Bowl team. It's called know your heritage. It was on the local station I mean it was a kind of low budget, you know with the sets and the local Newscaster would host it and it was the first time I wrote I read a book about the Great Migration and the reason why I think that's interesting is because I had always gone to good schools I had a good quality education that completely and totally erased African-Americans from it And it was when I worked on this quiz bowl team I read this book about the Great Migration and my team placed maybe fifth or sixth and Our prizes were paid for by the local chapter of the National Black McDonald's operators association That first encounter with a book about the Great Migration Led me down a path to write Southside girls growing up in the Great Migration To be a scholar of Chicago and African-American mass migration and every time I would go back to Chicago Whether it would be to visit a cultural center or a library There would be some plaque that said sponsored by or paid for the Black McDonald's operators association of Chicago land and Northwest Indiana and I think to myself what does it mean for? The center of my intellectual life to have been delivered by Black McDonald's franchise owners And for other African-Americans who grew up in major cities when I talked to them about Black McDonald's owners They would say oh, yeah, that was the guy who paid for the Little League team or yeah Oh, I know, you know, mr. Smith used to be on the radio talking about Health screenings that could happen on the weekends or they would help pay for the back-to-school parade Or my cousin went to this school by a scholarship that they paid for I used to watch the Lou Rawls United Negro College I'm like really dating myself here the United Negro College Fund, right all of these Organizations that were central to the African-American experience had some relationship with McDonald's and As I thought more about that relationship I also thought about the fact that when I was in graduate school I became more and more interested in What was becoming known as the food justice movement very broadly and This movement was fantastic It was talking about how we use resources and sustainability and all of the possibilities if we took seriously our food system and Then the topic of fast food would come up and that's when everyone got very judgy and very mean How could people let their kids eat like that? Why don't people know that if you eat hamburgers all the time You're gonna have heart disease. Why do certain communities have such instances of diabetes or Hypertension and what I started to realize is that so much The Feeling that was animating the deep desire to think about health disparities was about either contempt or pity toward the poor particularly the black poor and When I think about my career as a historian the through line where I go from thinking about African-American girls in the Great Migration to thinking about African-American and fast food is that I always want to write books about people and places that are often seen with contempt and Help people understand the very thoughtful political choices that those communities are making and So all of that came together in my interest about how McDonald's became black and Why is it in America today? There are some communities in which McDonald's has replaced the state in making sure that people have access To interesting cultural programs about history who have access to diabetes screening. Why is that the job youth? Training opportunity in many places and so what I found was a story about civil rights And a story about constrained choices and the choices people make under conditions in which they have to negotiate What's best for themselves in their communities? And what I realized is that when we are talking about food and health in America we are actually talking about capitalism and At the end of the day, I don't know if I care what people eat But I'm deeply concerned about the conditions in which those choices are made for them And so we have franchise the Golden Arches in black America. Ooh, that was really heavy So I will turn it over to my incredibly esteemed colleague Ted. Oh, thank you and congratulations. Thank you Yeah, I mean Tuesday was publication day Yeah, and then yesterday if you guys haven't seen it you should check out the New York Times review of the book Which is glowing and not surprising to those who know you and so there's so much to talk about and so But the place to always begin is with a passage from the book So there are these two sentences in chapter four that I want to begin with that Will sort of frame our conversation here but in and allow us a jumping off point And so you write while black America was continuing its fight Against the old problems of racism in job school housing and health It's entanglement with the fast-food industry was just was still brand new and no one could predict if the drive-thru Was a window that looked out onto a new world of possibility or just provided a view of the same old street And you did it's good It's gorgeous and I think it captures a lot of what the book wrestles with so you open the book talking about Ferguson, Missouri right after the killing of Michael Brown there's protests and happening in the street and How the McDonald's? There and on this main thoroughfare serves as a sort of reprieve from the chaos happening outside of the drive-thru You've got protesters coming in with pepper spray in their eyes looking for milk Police in like military gear looking for water or air conditioning And and so while they're clashing outside. There's what McDonald's is the place where there's some sort of Just an escape from from the chaos and so my first question is And you are an alum of University of Missouri, so Ferguson sort of it was close to home and talked about your upbringing Chicago And and McDonald's there so what? Why the focus on the economic model When what I thought when I picked this up was we're going to talk about McDonald's the place and black community and you talk about that but only Through the lens of franchising why the combination? So there are a few things that I think are Happening in the story of why the McDonald's is the is one of the few places still open during the Ferguson uprising and it goes back to My curiosity initially to write a book about McDonald's for those of you who are old enough to remember the uprising in Los Angeles in 1992 After things had calmed down about a week in Los Angeles McDonald's sent out a press release that essentially said none of our Stores in southern California and south Los Angeles were harmed and that is vindication for our social Socially progressive policies since the 1960s. I thought that was the weirdest thing I'd ever heard that there had been so much goodwill between people who are incredibly hurt and upset Over the vindication of police officers who had beaten this man And this is the first time people had seen it caught on video That in the kind of chaos of the uprising that people would say oh, but McDonald's is one of us Let's go elsewhere. That was what a strange claim and what I realized is that the way that fast food entered Communities of color especially black communities was because of chaos it was the uprisings after Martin Luther King's assassination and so they saw 1992 as the perfect bookend see if you go to these communities and you feed people and you let some people become Riches franchise owners, then they won't mess up your store I thought this was such a wild claim and then so in Ferguson when the McDonald's becomes that focal point People were writing about it as if this was a new moment like isn't this kind of interesting and I think no the reason Why McDonald's stays open? It's probably the wealthiest business in that community and the role of the people in that Relationship is so important. So I wanted to think about the ways that we seek We seek restaurants. We seek certain places in moments of chaos But you're asking me about the male or the economic follow franchising is fascinating to me because I feel like it's so quintessentially American It's the right to work hard and not own something and pretend that you own it Right, it's like how I own my house the Bank of America does and I actually own my car But you don't want to see my car right but at one point of you know bank owned that car Franchising is fascinating to me because it is an opportunity to carry the liability of a corporation with more resources than you do and to get a little bit out of it and The reason why I think franchising is so important if we think about African-American life in the late 1960s When that window opens for African-Americans to do this type of business It has some of the old-time features of Economic models that were very harmful to African-Americans like sharecropping But it's being done in a context in which people really believe that liberation will come from ownership And so there are these moments in the book where people are really confused Whether going to a black-owned franchise is supporting a black business for real But is it really a black business and there's this hilarious moment where the NAACP is trying to Call for a boycott of McDonald's in Los Angeles and they make a statement They say boycott McDonald's but not the black-owned ones But you know which ones are the black-owned ones because they're only in black communities And that's what part of the protest is about because we feel like we're being redlined You know, this is a really provocative and serious challenge to the question of consumer citizenship What does it mean to say that you will not engage or you'll engage in the selective way And so I think the economic model of franchising is fascinating Because it exists in this real tension of how do we feel like we have real ownership Over the means of production to be like super marxie about it But how what does it mean for a member of the business class to help a community? And what are the limits of that and I think for African-Americans and McDonald's there's there's so many examples of that Yeah, and I was gonna ask If the franchising model is a little sharecropping and so I'm glad you I mean, it's it's it's I mean what's it's a really powerful word and the reason I use that word is because And just recently in business insider. There was an article About some tensions among African-American franchise owners and McDonald's, but there's a case that I talked about in the 1980s where this man named Charles Griffith is a McDonald's operator in Los Angeles. He's very wealthy And he wants to open a new McDonald's in a white neighborhood and he claims he's being redlined out of that opportunity So he's using the language of residential segregation to talk about his business opportunities And this this guy is like ready for primetime every quote He gives is just the perfect jab. This is like before Twitter young people people were very funny even before Twitter So McDonald's counters his claims of racial discrimination to say We gave you the opportunity and we don't think it's bad to work in the black community and his his counter is who are you right? I'm the one who's giving jobs I'm the one who's absorbing the risk and liability of doing business here You say I should be allowed or I should be happy to do business in my own community He said I live in Bel Air that is my community So why am I relegated to only this section and I think that those are the dilemmas that Every person who wants to do the right thing is confronted with within the system, right? And I want to go back to to that after this next question So there's something about the franchise model in black America that pulls that a Debate that's been happening as long as there's been such a thing as black America And I think it's probably most well known in the Du Bois for the Washington debate about should is racial equality best achieved through political action and social uplift that Occurs through educating the best tenth of your race and then out allowing them to come back That's a Du Bois argument and then the Washington argument which says The political equality and things will come only if we show that we can be economically self-sufficient So the self-help self-determination Links the racial justice as something that follows economic justice and achievement and and I think in many ways We're still having that debate in black America about the better approach and those two things seem to collide When we talk about franchising in black communities because it does smell of economic attainment as well as It's sort of justice that by being allowed to own things in a place where black folks were not allowed to own things for quite a long time, so and and so we get this sort of Washingtonian Du Bois in debate leading into the civil rights movement and Suddenly clashing in the from the riots of 67 the assassination of Martin Luther King and the franchises become McDonald's and places become places for sit-ins and like the two theories collide here. So my question is how does franchising in black communities Satisfy both of those scratch both of those itches without feeling contradictory and and also How it seemed like the franchising corporations used this as a way of, you know Putting black franchises in black communities as a protection against their asset But also as a way of saying see this is us giving you some agency that didn't exist before I think that from our 2020 standpoint it's so easy to say how did people fall for this didn't they know that this wasn't going to lead to freedom Well, it's easy for us to say that because we know the answer but if you think about 1968 and you think about the question of What is around that corner and what's available to us? Franchising makes perfect sense Here's an opportunity at the very least to have a business in your community where you know that there is a There is a black kind of head of state and while this person may not be the perfect boss You know that they will respect you in a way that working for a white person Will probably not happen and you also know that when you are spending money at the very least It's going into the hands of someone who might have less contempt for you than a white business owner because one of the Things that I think we often miss in the history of the late 1960s is we focus so much on Residential white flight and the loss of tax revenue We forget what business white flight does to a lot of communities as well even before uprisings People do not have a lot of consumer choices and so the franchise does provide that but I think more than anything else The rhetoric of the time in which black self-determination Opening channels to black empowerment worked for everyone because on one hand It used a lot of the language of civil rights to talk about success, but it didn't threaten any type of It didn't challenge People who are resistant in integration and so by 68 and 69 and 70 people have seen very little games from the Civil Rights Act of 1964 voter participation is opening up as a result of 65 But you don't have a critical mass of candidates black candidates that are running that people are so invested in the system and Someone says well, how about this? How about we give you an opportunity to keep your dollars inside the community? Actually a pretty big deal and I think from our standpoint we can say well Surely it doesn't build new schools and it doesn't do all these things But at the very least it provides an opportunity to imagine ownership in a place that isn't just losing businesses and losing opportunities is completely stripped and gutted and Alienated from the very basic services that citizens should expect, you know if we think about like the arson and We we know major cities in which lots that were burned out in 68 are still burnt out lots, right? So if you can imagine something new appearing in a community that has been so gutted you can understand why people from a lot of different Ideological backgrounds were thinking okay. Let's give this a chance so Let's talk about like the first owner So you basically have franchises in black communities that are owned by white franchisees and then They get skittish after riots in 67 post Martin Luther King's assassination And so corporations begin looking for black owners of franchises So what were the sort of the content like how do they know they found a good black person to own a franchise? What were the and who were the first so they were a really interesting group of men who started the National Black McDonald Operators Association the very first guy in Chicago's Herman Petty, and he was a barber. He had Driven a city bus. He had you know, he had a college education and he was a person that Was noted because he had a desire to be in business But people in the community knew and trusted him and they knew that was going to kind of go far Some of the other men who were the first franchise owners Were people who had been part of that generation of people who had been in the military Who had kind of gotten some opportunities, but again it only went so far and then there were some People who had been successful in other industries one of the people I had the chance to talk to was He played professional basketball and is now an advisor for the Raptors And when you get to a certain age this happened He was you know, he brought a little bit more capital and was a franchisee in Milwaukee But what's interesting about all of these men and they were all men is that they were really left to their own devices and I think the idea was if you want to make this successful You figure it out and the reason they started a black Operators association is because they felt cut out from the opportunities that McDonald's was supposed to provide all operators, right? So I want to read this quote. So let's like I want to leap forward like three or four or five years Nixon is now president 72 rolls around he's up for reelection and he starts taking out ads and jet and ebony talking about this thing Black capitalism is what he calls it so I want to read one of the The Blurbs that occur in one of these ads so one of them is of this man young man well-quiffed afro University cardigan on surrounded in a library surrounded by books and And a side beside it says Richard Nixon believes strongly in black capitalism because black capitalism is black power In the best sense of the word not in the scary Like actual accountability by the black power right it's the road that leads to black economic influence black pride And the black man's flight for equality And so this I want you to talk about black capitalism a little bit It's it's wrapped up in this Nixon ad which you know I think it rolls right into the franchising conversation. It also combines like a politics of respectability With black power, you know And so there it's throughout the book you talk about Black mayors and the role that they played the black wealthy But also the black panthers and how McDonald's franchises had to talk to all of these folks And and Nixon's black capitalism seems to pull the two together so one of the things that if you If you look at what they would call riot commission reports starting in the early 20th century so the 1910s to the present and They say they asked the question. Why are people so angry and people will say police brutality? Not enough jobs poor quality schools There's no affordable housing or the quality of the housing is so poor and they'll say you know problems with local businesses And these commissions are like whoa, that's a lot How about we focus on the business part and the other kind of key elements about why people are completely Disconnected we'll figure that out later, but the business part is I think the easiest part Because what it suggests is that if a person can create a workable relationship to capitalism Then they will be fine then they will not be so upset the next time or they will rationalize these different types of inequality So throughout the book there's all of these people who probably wouldn't agree on a lot of things who Find themselves coming together on this idea of the franchise because I think their reasoning is it's something It is a start it is a place for us to maybe pivot and have other needs met And so you have very you know what we would say in a very surface level politically radical groups They're they're pretty supportive of this idea. We have people who are who are strong Critics of capitalism who are saying yeah capitalism is bad But when it's done the context of our community and we know what you do We can we can figure it out and I don't think that's very different than where we are today you know it's it's all of the feelings that people have about like JV and You know Colin Kaepernick and Colin Kaepernick is trying to do something radical But he's with Nike so does it make it less radical? But if it's him, do you feel a little bit better about it? These are the same types of questions that were rising up as These fast food restaurants were opening and I think again I try to be so sensitive to the fact that people are living with a constrained set of choices And they're navigating those choices the best that they can and it doesn't absolve them from responsibility, but I think it is most important to really focus on how a structure allows that to happen You know people, you know, it's people would ask me like is this a takedown book of the fast food industry It's like there's so many things to take down, right? This is about my discomfort with what capitalism presents to people and where it Forces people to have to make calculations to get their most basic needs met not just to have fun and enjoy a burger but to Wonder is this the only job I can possibly have or is this the only avenue to a swimming pool in my community? Is this the only avenue to me feeling like there's a place for senior citizens to sit and have coffee This is what is like the part that kind of makes my stomach kind of turn up and nuts, right? And I think that those are the same things that people were grappling with and and people made different decisions About what their relationship would be to these institutions Yeah, and and so and it seems like McDonald's at least like they took the hint that it wasn't just a matter of Putting a black face on the local McDonald's, but more needed to happen Which and you get some of these investments that you talked about at the beginning So I'll be honest that when I when we first talked about this years ago McDonald's in black America to me immediately evokes images of Calvin Baggy A person of a certain age and cross-colors during Soltran, right post 1990 babies know We're okay, and so and I I'm I felt like those I still remember those commercials I mean look big math play at this court listen We can do the whole thing right we can do the whole thing right, so can you so how did McDonald's at a time? When there's battles going on about who gets franchises and the role they're playing in the community Come up with an ad campaign Maybe the first that targeted black Americans not just by creating white advertisements and putting black people in them But the creating ad campaigns centered written by for black people So there's been a long history of you know What is now called ethnic or targeted marketing towards African-Americans and a lot of it grew as a result of the great migration But there's always been these attempts But what McDonald's did so well with it out of the urging of the black franchise owners is they really Invested in black culture makers, and I wrote a chapter in the book called black America brought to you by Because I wanted to really acknowledge the creative energy of it I think there's a way that we can really reduce The creativity of the fast food industry because it's so big ubiquitous, but it is really it is Fascinating when we think about the ephemera and all of the affective work of the fast food industry, and it is creative because the Calvin ads were really effective because the reason they created them was because they felt like people were there was the negative perception of working at McDonald's and the sociologists who had termed Who created the term McJobs? They felt like young people didn't think was cool to work at McDonald's There's all of this baggage so they created this Calvin ad to make it cool again to work at McDonald's and the entire ad is About this young black man who everyone thinks is scary or up to no good But the big reveal is he works at McDonald's and he's a nice. He's a good one Right like this is so appalling, but let me tell you nine-year-old me was like hey Calvin This is so cool right look you know look at me learning something about the world and the you know these These advertisements are so smart because they Create a form of address and intimacy in a product that is not about Specificity or specialness and they and they create that feeling and anytime you believe that you are smarter than advertising Advertising will say I will one-up you smarty pants right we all think we're better and smarter than it Watch an hour of television and see if you can walk away without a deep desire to buy all new things And they're like gosh everything I own is unattractive. Why do I have a deep desire to buy? Even if you do streaming and you don't watch the commercials the entire show is a commercial right and so all of this is to say that for the black culture makers through Burrell communications and through the singers and the background dancers through the Double the national double-dutch national double-dutch team that was on television. This is like not small Right, and I think I I think it's so easy for many of us to Struggle imagining a world without McDonald's right But of people of the generation that were patronizing of McDonald's in like let's say 1980 for black consumers They've only had about 16 years of federal protection to go into anywhere like if you really think about how stark that is and The types of television program that was available to black people was very limited And if you think about the importance of black publications like black enterprise and jet and ebony to show these Advertisements, this is I don't know if I can say it's the greatest triumph of culture, but it's special It is meaningful, you know, I I used to go to the McDonald's in downtown Chicago. The theme was black history. I Don't know how many times I went to a black museum. I mean I'm a Philistine I'm just gonna be honest. I don't know how many times as a kid I went to really a black museum in Chicago. We have them I wasn't there every day, but the black McDonald's with you know The portraits of like Joe Lewis and then the like, you know the reprints of the March on Washington I want there a lot and so all of this is to say that I think that this relationship Increasingly has little to do with the food and there's about a mode of address and interaction That is not perfect and sometimes it's very offensive but still really matters and is substantive and if we Don't take that seriously that our interventions and trying to get people's behavior around what they eat to change I think that it gets lost Yeah, and as you were talking about the McDonald's with the black history Artifacts on the law it brings to mind the scene and do the right thing where they're talking about the pizzeria Like why don't you have any black people on the wall in the middle of a black neighborhood? And so this gets to another quote I want to read very quickly from the book in chapter 4 where you say fast food Franchises learn that blacks valued some things neighborhood control care for community racial authenticity And but fast food companies couldn't and fast food companies could never provide these things every fight wasn't about owning a Franchise in fact most fights were not the central question in all in all of these conflicts Could fast food be a good citizen to neighbor in or symbol of black America? And so while franchise Corporations are trying to create the capitalists in black America and black franchises Black citizens are appreciative of that, but they want a good neighbor And from their this corporation and that is not a capitalist endeavor Except to the extent that it makes money for the thing So you talk in the book especially towards the end about how government incentivized France the franchise model and that allowed these black franchise owners to be in black communities But there isn't really an incentive for being for these corporations being a better Citizen to or neighbor of the community that they're in So what's what is the future of sort of fast food franchising cold when all of the government programs empowerment zones now? Opportunity zones is the child of this championed by the two black male Democrats in the Senate Democrat Cory Booker and Republican Tim Scott It's still very much a black whale of bringing opportunity but There's also this fight around whether the food is healthy whether there's a living wage being paid and what the Responsibility is for that businesses and those those neighborhoods. So what's does the tension get resolved or or? Does government interference just make this a capitalist endeavor and these questions So I think that the tensions Are always there because the corporation is being Seen as the space to resolve the problems that I believe the public sphere should be resolving and so the problem is not just that the franchise is there is that Particularly in a black community the franchise is bearing a weight that no business should bear in a society that values all people and all citizens But when that doesn't happen right people will search for the places in which some of those needs can be met And I think and I think it's still the case that black-owned franchises fill that gap and fill that space You know the idea of whether a McDonald's is a citizen a neighbor a leader Speaks to the long history of the African-American Business person as not just the person in the community who runs the business but the person who's going to run interference with the Legal system the person who's going to do the lending because there isn't access to capital through a banking system the person who's going to keep tab on the level of Activism that's happening among the young people right and so any time again that we claim to have a Democratic civil society Except for when you're poor or when you're black or when you are young and can't be represented or Whatever and that the business in the marketplace will be the place that fills the gap We will always have these tensions. I do think that it is interesting that we have a very thoughtful food justice movement that is trying to move away from the kind of other contemptuous or Demeaning ways that people talk about, you know food and what we eat. I think it's getting better I think because we have more voices of people of color in those movements that are a little bit more critical But at the end of the day, I hope that my research and my commitment to this issue is that if we Target all of our energies on the food then we will never resolve the real reasons why People can't make all of the options That they would they may want to exercise and so we'll see what happens. I mean, I don't know I don't know what the future holds. I always pretend like I can predict things and then I stopped doing that after 2016 for obvious reasons But I do think that I do think that the shifts in the food system particularly in the food delivery system Ghost kitchens preparing food and then sending it out food trucks all of this different ways in which people are eating and consuming Will impact how the fast food industry Engages more and more with communities and I think the creation of the fast casual fast casual is a fascinating category It's eating fast food, but thinking it's healthy, right because it's it's this idea of segmenting the market for more affluent people All of these factors I think will ultimately shift Some of those dynamics, but again You know if communities are stripping the things they need they will seek them out where they can So I do want to open it up to questions Or if while the hands are going up I do want to quickly ask whether McDonald's was sort of at the forefront of what we call today corporate social responsibility or if or if this is Some evolution of it, you know, there's I think that Prior to the rise of McDonald's what people called corporate social responsibility would be more in the care More in the category of like charity, right or philanthropy, you know a contest Special Kids Day sponsored by Pepsi I think McDonald's is amazing in that The system is deeply regimented like I can't open a McDonald's and be like hey y'all we're gonna have steak sandwiches all the time We're like we're gonna try, you know crawfish etouffé on the menu. I'm not allowed to do that, right? So there's a lot of rigidity in terms of what is offered and how it's offered, but then it Allows its franchise owners in the area of philanthropy and community building to do it in the ways That are fit for that community and I think with the African American franchise owners in the various ways that they were interacting with community I think they really kind of Created a new model of doing that and I think McDonald's understood that they had to give them the space to do that In the ways that were relevant to that community in order to get the buy-in And so I think it's a really interesting model of rigidity and flexibility in the in the service of profit So I'm wondering we a lot of the conversation has focused on the community impact and choice and A little bit of a mention on the ownership Which is the ownership itself has been a real source for economic mobility for those owners and the sum I'd love for you to Expound upon whether how deeply you followed that thread and what your findings were of How was it a source of economic mobility? Did it did it pay back other than the social responsibility context that it paid back in dividends beyond just the jobs themselves in terms of you know, the there was there have been groups of people who have had especially in the Late 60s 70s and 80s but tried franchising and we're not able to maintain because it's a very risky business If you think about one incident of food poisoning The rise in you know one ingredient price. It's it's still the restaurant industry In terms of kind of generating wealth in other places. This is a big issue of debate whether It really is an investment because of the the amount of money that has to go elsewhere In terms of franchising fees real estate fees Loans that may be made by banks that are not community or local banks the one thing that I did notice in reading about franchise openings in the 70s is the ways that Banks that had traditionally been discriminatory or exclusionary of black business people were comfortable with this model because it had the McDonald's behind it and would use that as a way of saying see we're opening up the banking world to people who can franchise these very You know lucrative, so there's there's also this other element in which when organizations like the NAACP Start making claims to McDonald's about equity. They put deposits in black banks and then they Purchased policies of black owned insurance agencies and so I think in terms of distribution of wealth I think some of those institutions that were waning in the 70s and 80s They were able to get an infusion of capital and the NAACP's work with McDonald's allowed for the sponsorship and the extension of some of their programs My question is about a I'm just curious if you just discussed the Martin Luther King candle ad and the origins He shined his light. I think it's called. Yeah, if light could shine so bright. I mean I can see yeah And then my other question is just could you talk a little bit about how the franchise owners? Mobilize politically in their own interests and not in this and how that works in conjunction with other things happening in the community So I talk a little bit about the important role that the franchise owners have in the Martin Luther King holiday Again, it is Depending on how old you are The holiday was not Everyone's favorite holiday and Martin Luther King was not everyone's favorite guy from the past in the early 80s and corporations Weren't sure if they wanted to line up behind the Martin Luther King holiday African-american franchise owners and McDonald's were very very proactive in sponsoring the holiday creating that video They had a whole program. I think with Shirley Caesar and they created an exhibit at Atlanta Airport You know to highlight they were very very big on the holiday and and I think they understood why they had to take that position and That is when they started to graph the story of black franchising with the story of Martin Luther King together Your question about political organization, it's interesting One of the earlier members of the National Black McDonald's operators association He said it was our SCLC. It was our SNCC. It was our NAACP. It was our Urban League it was all of the organizations because They're in a strange position They're they're the only black Franchises in this huge network, but also outside of that network They're very few black business people who are doing similar things in that way. And so as an organization they really have come together historically to challenge McDonald's policies and to really Suggest that as a block they are in the position to negotiate more opportunities to bring more franchise owners into the system And to get more stores. I had a little been I found a little thing in the archive about some bundling for Jesse Jackson And Jesse Jackson is actually very important to the story I think that I should probably write a book about him at some point. We all should everyone's right Because he is two people Jesse Jackson and Jim Brown Jim Brown, they're the kind of connective threads of this book. They are there at every single moment Having a conversation about silver rights and black capitalism and really understanding their role as negotiators and so Politically they have advocated for each other and they've been very proud of it. And then they have also done a lot of work in mayoral campaigns about you know using their influence to to launch black candidates and It's it was amazing to me. I'd never heard that phrase before we don't need civil rights, but we need silver Oh, he was saying it quite a bit. Yeah economic justice and racial justice packets together a question on this Yes, sir in the yellow How have the black franchise owners dealt with changing demographics? They got their franchise in Los Angeles in the 70s. It was an African-american neighbor It's probably an old Latino neighborhood now. How has that affected them? So shortly after the creation of the National Black McDonald's Operators Association There was a move to do similar recruitment among The Latino community and then the Asian Pacific Islander community So you do see some of that demographic shift that happens in places like Southern, California some parts of Texas and other parts of the South one of the Things that one of the rabbit holes that I found myself in that I had to dig myself out so I could finish the book was a campaign in which McDonald's partnered with the National Council of La Raza to do educational material to target Spanish-speaking Customers and it is really fascinating the distinction of the appeals to these two consumer bases And so a lot of the material that they did was about Kind of cultural heritage Bilingual Instruction for kids where the trayliner would have words in English and what's the word in Spanish? It's a very very interesting project for one of you to write not me I can tell you where all the research is I have some in my office It's all yours, but it's a really kind of fascinating way in which They're using some of the threads of how they're marketing to African-Americans and other ethnic communities So I think we've got time for one more question before we wrap up Thank you, this is great. I'm curious how McDonald's compares with other franchise or is there with Walmart where they unique did other Outfits try to copy them did it? Yeah, and can I add like within the landscape? There's like Jim or James Brown had a franchise and you have like these chicken shats popping up So like yeah, James Brown actually gave a speech in which he said he is moving away from music So he can focus on his gold platter restaurants did not he did not continue in that vein So two things happen and actually this brings these two questions together in terms of copying it McDonald's is the first to aggressively do this This this bid for franchises of color and then Burger King follow suit and then KFC and Taco Bell follow suit and They're they're seeing what they're doing with their organization. But I think McDonald's is leaps and bounds in that model While McDonald's as McDonald's was growing in African-American communities in the 70s other people wanted to see if they could get in on the action and so Throughout the late 60s into the mid 70s. There were a number of these celebrity backed Franchise opportunities that made the argument that we really are black owned McDonald's in the black owned But we are so James Brown's golden platter Mahalia Jackson's glory fried chicken Muhammad Ali's champ burger 99.9% of these concepts were actually Partnerships with white lawyers that would lease the names and then they would market it Mahalia Jackson's glory fried chicken was also millie mini pearls chicken It was the same it was the same brothers who had created these two different bands and they would say these things that today I mean as terrible and racist as human beings are today There is a language of kind of corporate openness that we were not you know that people will play this game But you know in the 60s and 70s there was there was kind of no model for it So one of the quotes about the the chicken restaurants is why must black people be subjected to buying chicken from white? They should have what how about like some housing and Anyway, all of this is to say that they they they saw the appeal of buying black And and people it was kind of a race to the bottom to see who could who could try to beat it out And in the last chapter I talked about now defunct chicken restaurant called chicken George that You know people of a certain age did you remember it as a Maryland Baltimore? And you know this guy is really smart, and he's actually beating the competition right KFC and Popeyes can't compete with it The chicken is better, but what do they have the huge machinery of these corporations? so they start giving people discount coupons and they and he can't compete and so So buy the book and you'll become obsessed with fast food. Thank you folks Thank you So marshal will be outside signing books So if you brought yours great, she'll sign it and if you don't have one buy one it took me to two evenings to get through it It's that interesting so thank you so much Thank you for all my friends