Sambo’s once was a popular family restaurant chain, peaking in the late 1970s with more than 1,100 locations across the country. The founders said the name originally came from combining parts of their names: Sam Battistone Sr. and Newell Bohnett. The owners then chose to use images from the story of Little Black Sambo in their restaurants and names in the story to shape the menu.
In response to a curiousKC inquiry, Tony Bolden, associate professor of African-American Studies at the University of Kansas and editor of the Langston Hughes Review, shares his experience about going to Sambo’s as a child in California. He also discusses the history around the name Sambo, and the implications of using the name to make money.
The company filed bankruptcy in late 1981. Today, a single surviving Sambo’s remains open in California.
Reading these stories is free, but telling them is not. Start your monthly gift now to support Flatland’s community-focused reporting.
Related Stories
A Better Big Blue Battlefield in Kansas City | Part II
Editor’s note: This is the second installment of a three-part series on the restoration of the Big Blue Battlefield in Kansas City, Missouri. In the mid-19th century, overland trail teamsters driving wagons west sometimes followed a branch of the Santa Fe Trail out of Independence, using the shortcut to reach fields where the animals used…
A Better Big Blue Battlefield | Part I
Editor’s note: This is the first installment of a three-part series on the restoration of the Big Blue Battlefield in Kansas City, Missouri. It was cold for late October in Kansas City. In 1864 Lt. Patrick Henry Minor, then leading an artillery battery against Confederate forces, would die the following March, from what likely had…
Historic Earthquakes Accounts Guide Modern First Responders
On December 16, 1811, a U.S. Army officer stationed in the soon-to-be-established Missouri Territory woke just after 2 a.m. reacting to what he described as a “great agitation”, an earthquake. Several of the officer’s guards, he soon wrote to a friend, “could scarcely keep their feet” during the shaking, which he said lasted about eight…