NPR

Black Restaurant Week: Across U.S., Events Remind Diners, 'We're Here. Support Us'

Blacks often struggle to raise capital to open and run restaurants, a legacy of discrimination. Over the past few years, promotions to help diners know which restaurants are black-owned have spread.
Thromentta Anderson, the owner of Pass Da Peas in northwest Milwaukee likes to greet customers by name and give them tokens toward free drinks. But he was glad to see new faces during Black Restaurant Week.

Oakland is a city that's rapidly gentrifying, shedding much of its African-American population along the way. The California city, which was 47 percent black in 1980, is now divided roughly into a quarter each of black, white, Asian and Hispanic residents.

The sense of the city's changing identity has ended up helping Adrian Henderson's business. He's co-owner of Kingston 11 Cuisine, a Caribbean restaurant in a neighborhood that's changed so much lately that it goes by the dual name of Koreatown Northgate.

"Here in Oakland, folks are seeing black folks being pushed out," Henderson says. "We're a community-based restaurant, so people of color are supporting our business. Any black-owned business or restaurant is being over-supported now, which is great,

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