Martin Luther King Jr's Soul Food

The Food of the Movement

This is the food that Martin Luther King Jr. grew up on in Atlanta, and the food that he continued to enjoy as he travelled for the civil rights movement - at family tables, in church communities, and in restaurants that fed organisers during the movement.

In Atlanta, Paschal’s was founded in 1947 by brothers James and Robert Paschal, with fried chicken as the specialty — and it later became a documented civil-rights meeting place where leaders, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., gathered to eat and talk strategy.

During the Jim Crow era, Black families often relied on shoebox lunches while travelling — packed meals to avoid unsafe or segregated dining options — and fried chicken shows up again and again because it holds up well and doesn’t need much to serve. This meal represents not just comfort food, but the sustenance that fueled one of America’s most important social movements.