- Sit-ins & commerce
- Segregation
- 1947–1996
- City of Atlanta
Paschal's restaurant and motor hotel
A Black-owned restaurant on West Hunter Street (now Martin Luther King Jr. Dr) that became an unofficial headquarters of the civil rights movement. In 1967 the Paschal brothers added Paschal's Motor Hotel, often described as the city's first Black-owned and -operated motel.
The record
Robert and James Paschal opened a sandwich shop at 837 West Hunter Street in 1947 and in 1959 moved across the street to a larger building at 830. King, Andrew Young, John Lewis, Julian Bond, Ralph Abernathy and others met there to plan marches, sit-ins and voter drives, and the brothers posted bond for arrested protesters. In 1967 they opened a six-story motor hotel with about 120 rooms (some sources say 125). Accounts differ on what was 'first' about it: NGE calls it the first Black-owned hotel in Atlanta, and the Digital Library of Georgia the first large-scale hotel for African Americans.
Today: Clark Atlanta University bought the complex in 1996. The historic restaurant building was saved after a public campaign; Paschal's now operates in Castleberry Hill.