Many of the master chefs in the South, both the upper South as well as the deep South, were blacks and many of those people came here to Washington, D.C., and opened up establishments. Very, very few of them have survived. But they certainly were very prominent.
When you say that you are a race man, it means that you embrace the entire black community regardless of the hue, whether somebody is very light and could pass for possibly white or someone is very dark.
The Washington black community was able to succeed beyond his wildest dreams. I mean, we had our own newspapers, our own restaurants, our own theaters, our own small shops, our own clubs, our own Masonic lodges.