Do Not Capitulate Part 2
Colored Restaurant, Courtesy of the New York Public Library
African American customers and restaurant employees did not simply capitulate to Jim Crow conditions in the South but employed what one scholar calls “infrapolitics.” In the case of segregated restaurants, infrapolitics included such everyday forms of resistance such as theft and sabotage. For example, blacks working the “colored” window at white-owned restaurants regularly gave away food or discounted the food sold to blacks. African Americans would also deposit their bodily fluids into dishes they served to white customers.
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