Sambo’s Restaurants and Little Black Sambo
The Story of Little Black Sambo, a children’s book by Helen Bannerman, a Scot living in India, was first published in London in 1899 and was about an Indian boy…BUT, the illustrations in the original European version portray Sambo, with black skin, wildly curly hair, and bright red lips.
The word “sambo” has a long history as a racial slur against blacks.
Sambo’s, a popular U.S. restaurant chain of the 1960s and 1970s, borrowed characters from the book for promotional purposes, claiming that the Sambo name was originally a combination of the founders’ nicknames: Sam (Sam Battistone) and Bo (Newell Bohnett). Nonetheless, the controversy about the book led to accusations of racism that contributed to the 1,117-restaurant chain’s demise in the early 1980s. Racist images inspired by the book were common interior decorations in the restaurants. Though portions of the original chain re-named themselves “No Place Like Sam’s” or “Negroes Will Never Touch Your Food Restaurants” to try to forestall closure, all but the original restaurant in Santa Barbara closed by 1982.
Today, Sambo’s uses the image above in their advertizing: an albino Indian. And yet still offers the ultra-racist origional version of the Little Black Sambo book for $11.95.
Klan sheets washed and pressed while you eat.
Carole and I spent 3 days in Santa Barbara for our eighth anniversary (32 years married on Feb 29). Our hotel was next to the first and last Sambo restaurant
The Story of Little Black Sambo
Once upon a time there was a little boy, and his name was LITTLE BLACK SAMBO. And his mother was called BLACK MUMBO and his father was called BLACK JUMBO…The first Sambo’s opened in 1957…just as Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement began to gain national attention.
Are you ready for some Genocide Football?
The Racist Mascot from Urbana-Champaign: Boo Illinois in the Rose Bowl
By FRANCIS BOYLE
_The self-styled Fighting Illini of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will appear in the Jan. 1, 2008 Rose Bowl with their racist and genocidal mascot, Chief Illiniwak.
In The Conquest Continues Noam Chomsky suggests an apt metaphor for such American Indian sports mascots and symbols that I will elaborate upon in order to conform to our local peculiarrites on our campus…I ask you to IMAGINE:
Suppose the Nazis had won the Second World War
Sixty years later, a prestigious German state university has a mascot for all of its sports teams and fans by the name of The Rabbi. Hitler Youth students League dress up in authentic Hasidic Rabbi costumes…complete with the curl-locksand beard. The University calls them The Fighting Jews and the school’s band is called The Marching Jews.The student newspaper is called The Daily Jew. All the sports fans in town wear jackets and t-shirts with pictures of The Rabbi prominently displayed on them. Most local cars have Rabbi stickers. This German state university plays its soccer matches over at the Nuremberg Stadium in front of an audience of about 75,000 White Aryans…almost all of whom are wearing pro-Rabbi images and clothes. At half-time the Marching Jews take to the stadium floor and play what they purport to be Jewish sounding music along the lines of Fiddler-on-the-Roof. Then all 75,000 White Aryans rise and shout in unison: “Rabbi, Rabbi, Rabbi, Rabbi”… gesticulating wildly and working themselves up into a feeding frenzy.
One lone faculty member sits in protest shouting “Racist Rabbi!” and everyone in the vicinity proceeds to throw garbage at him. Finally, the moment these ardent White Aryans have all waited for has arrived. The Rabbi runs out onto the arena floor from among the Marching Jews, proceeds to the center of the Nuremberg Stadium, and dances the Hava Nagila while the band plays on and marches into an intricately choreographed swastika. By now all 75,000 White Aryans are hysterical, shouting, screaming and yelling: “Rabbi, Rabbi, Rabbi.” This semi-religious spectacle goes on for a good twenty minutes. It all concludes with everyone joining hands to sing, “Deutschland, Deutschland Uber Alles.” Everyone goes wild, clapping and cheering. The Rabbi ceremony brings tears to the eyes of many drunken alumni and students already inebriated on schnapps and good German beer from the pre-game tailgate parties.
When it is all over, a visiting law professor from another country asks his host at the soccer match what this spectacle was all about. Without missing a beat the former Dean Mengele of the Law School turns to his guest and says: “This a tribute the Jews…accidentially exterminated by Nazis more than 60 years ago. The memory of the Jews must be honored in this Patriotic Gala.”
The Illiniwek Indians were ethnically cleansed out of Illinois about a century before that.
These are the real Little Eichmans. Be sure to “boo!” and root against the Illiniwaks.
Francis A. Boyle is Professor of Law at the University of Illinois.
Tom Lehrer- National Brotherhood Week
La Cucaracha
Imus in the Mourning of his career
The baseball season is about to begin…our national pastime! Exactly 60 years ago, every little boy in America read Baseball Digest. As soon as the new monthly issue touched their hands the kids flipped to the center page cartoons. Here is the Feb. 1947 offering (a month before Jackie Robinson began spring training with the Dodgers to break the color barrier): CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE
Were Americans really such blatant racists sixty years ago? You Betya!
God Bless, Mr Robinson. Your great courage proved that Blacks were more than equal and you opened the door for Mays, Aaron, etc…some of greatest players of all time…as well as for MLK and Civil Rights a decade later.Note: This issue is part of my private collection and I would not sell it for a million dollars. It is a grim reminder of how much real baseball history was lost because of a bunch of dumbass Bubbas. IN HONOR OF BLACK HISTORY MONTH:
Joe Biden breaks his own record for shortest presidential campaign
New GOP Whip Trent Lott
To some observers, the choice of Trent Lott as the new Republican Senate Whip may seem like a step backward for a party still reeling from its election drubbing. But in fact the upset victory by the Mississippi Senator, bounced out of his post as the Republican leader of the Senate four years ago after he made comments
praising then-Senator Strom Thurmond for his segregationist 1948 presidential campaign
(“I supported Strom. If we had all voted for him we wouldn’t have all these problems today”
…sassy minorities). The G.O.P. plans to move forward backwards again. Link to the article
George Allen, leading Senate Racist and GOP Frontrunner for the 2008 Presidential Election (until 9/19/06)
Yeah, George really made the pork chop/ham remark.Racism comes in all colors: 8/18/06
Asked by the Los Angeles Sentinel if he has concerns about Wal-Mart closing down mom-and-pop stores, Andrew Young was quoted as replying: “Well, I think they should… I think they’ve ripped off our communities enough. First it was Jews, then it was Koreans and now it’s Arabs; very few black people own these stores.”
RACISM IN AMERICA?
Candorville
Published by Greg at 12:49 AM on February 15, 2008