Restaurateur

Restaurateur Craig Welburn was born on May 27, 1949 in Berwyn, Pennsylvania to Ruth Ann and Harold Ira Welburn. He graduated from Conestoga High School in Berwyn, Pennsylvania in 1967. Welburn went on to receive his B.A. degree in secondary education and social science from Cheyney State College in Cheyney, Pennsylvania in 1971, and his M.A. degree in management from Central Michigan University in Mount Pleasant, Michigan.

From 1972 to 1983, Welburn worked in middle management at the New Jersey Bell Telephone Company. While there, Welburn began a four year part-time training program with the McDonald’s Corporation in 1979 that would prepare him to purchase and run his own McDonald’s franchise. He and his wife, Diane Welburn, purchased his first McDonald’s location in the West Kensington neighborhood of North Philadelphia in 1983. That same year, Welburn and his wife founded their own company, Welburn Management. Through Welburn Management, the couple would acquire eight restaurants in Philadelphia, New Jersey, and Delaware. They expanded into the Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Northern Virginia areas in 2001, adding another twenty five restaurants. In 1999, Welburn was named chairman and CEO of the National Black McDonald’s Operators Association. During his tenure, Welburn helped to increase the number of African American owned restaurants in the McDonald’s system by forty percent.

Welburn served on the board of directors of the Phil Ad Mac organization; as chairman of the McDonald’s African American Consumer Market Advertising Committee; and as a member of the McDonald’s Operators National Advertising Committee. He was also a member of the McDonald’s National Leadership Council and served on the Library of Congress’ James Madison Council. In 2002, Welburn established the Craig Welburn Endowed Scholarship Fund his alma mater, Cheyney University, to improve support of financial need for students. He has also received many awards and honors for his work. In 2013, Welburn and his wife were honored with the People Leadership Award by the Baltimore Washington Region ROA and he was inducted into the Boule in 2015.

Welburn and his wife, Diane E. Welburn, have four children.

Craig Welburn was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on August 19, 2018.

Restaurateur Diane Welburn was born on February 26, 1948 in Sea Isle City, New Jersey to Jean Riddick and Thomas Lacey. At two months old, Welburn was adopted by Albert Wilson and Mollie Wilson. Welburn attended Monroeville Elementary School and later graduated from Woodstown High School. She received her B.A. degree in social work as an Educational Opportunity Fund King Scholar at Glassboro State College, now known as Rowan University, in 1974. Welburn later returned to Glassboro State College to pursue a special education and early childhood teaching certification and a New Jersey real estate license.

Welburn worked in Camden, New Jersey with the Camden New Jersey State Division of Youth and Family Services, as a social worker, prior to joining the Woodbury, New Jersey School District as a special education teacher, where she earned tenure. While she taught, Welburn’s husband, Craig Welburn, began a four year part-time training program with the McDonald’s Corporation in 1979 that would prepare him to purchase and run his own McDonald’s franchise. The couple purchased their first McDonald’s location in the West Kensington neighborhood of North Philadelphia in 1983. That same year, Welburn and her husband founded their own company, Welburn Management. Through Welburn Management, the couple would acquire eight restaurants in Philadelphia, New Jersey, and Delaware. They expanded into the Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Northern Virginia areas in 2001, adding another twenty five restaurants. Welburn went on to found the Craig T. & Diane E. Welburn Philanthropic Fund in 2016, where serving as president.

Welburn has received a number of awards and honors, including the distinguished Rowan University Education Opportunity Alumni Award from her alma mater as well as the Chester County Jack and Jill Mother of the Year Award. Her business endeavors have earned her and her husband, Craig Welburn, the Ronald McDonald Award for Community Involvement, the Dale City Business of the Year Award and McDonald’s National Black McDonald’s Operators Association Dr. Lozelle J. DeLuz Award.

Welburn and her husband, Craig Welburn, have four children.

Diane Welburn was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on August 19, 2018.

Restaurateur and opera singer Alexander Smalls was born on February 7, 1952 in Spartanburg, South Carolina. He graduated from Spartanburg High School in 1970, and enrolled at Wofford College before transferring to the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, where he received his B.F.A. degree in opera in 1974. He then attended the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania between 1974 and 1977.

Upon graduation, Smalls, a classically trained baritone, toured professionally as an opera singer. As a member of the Houston Grand Opera, he performed in the George Gershwin opera Porgy and Bess, which earned Grammy and Tony Awards in 1977. Smalls studied opera and culinary arts in Europe; upon returning to the United States in the late 1970s, he founded his own catering business, Small Miracle. In 1994, Smalls launched his first restaurant, Café Beulah, in New York City, specializing in Southern Revival cooking that combined Gullah and international cuisines. Then, in 1996, Smalls opened Sweet Ophelia's, a casual dining venue featuring late-night, live entertainment in New York City’s SoHo neighborhood. He went on to open The Shoebox Café, an upscale Southern bistro in New York City’s Grand Central Terminal; however, the restaurant closed in 2001 in the aftermath of 9/11. Smalls founded a second catering business, Smalls & Co., which served a celebrity clientele that included Denzel Washington, Spike Lee and Toni Morrison. In 2012, Smalls established Harlem Jazz Enterprises; and, in partnership with Richard Parsons, opened two restaurants in Harlem in 2013: Minton’s and The Cecil.

Smalls has appeared on television on NBC, CNN, ABC, CBS, and the Food Network, among others. He also served as a contributor to Food & Wine, The Washington Post, the New York Times, the New York Daily News, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Crain's New York Business. Smalls authored the memoir and cookbook Grace the Table: Stories and Recipes from My Southern Revival, which features a foreword from jazz musician Wynton Marsalis.

Smalls was the recipient of the Legacy Award given by Amsterdam News in 2014, and the C-Cap Honors Award given by C-Cap in 2015. He joined the board of the Harlem School of The Arts in 2014, and served as board chair of director of Opus 118 Music School from 2007 to 2009.

Alexander Smalls was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on September 20, 2016.

Chef and restaurateur Marcus Samuelsson (born Kassahun Tsegie) was born in Ethiopia on January 25, 1971. Samuelsson was orphaned in 1972, when a tuberculosis epidemic took the life of his mother. In 1973, he and his sister were adopted by Ann Marie and Lennart Samuelsson and brought to Gothenburg, Sweden, where his grandmother, Helga, taught him how to cook. Samuelsson went on to study at the Culinary Institute in Gothenburg, apprenticed in Switzerland in 1989, and then in France from 1992 to 1994.

In 1994, Samuelsson moved to the United States for an apprenticeship with Aquavit, a restaurant in New York City. He was quickly promoted to executive chef and then made partner of Aquavit in 1997. In 1995, Samuelsson became the youngest chef ever to receive a three-star restaurant review from The New York Times. In 2003, he opened the New York restaurant, Riingo, which served Japanese-influenced American food. He then launched a television show, Inner Chef, which aired in 2005, and another in 2008 called Urban Cuisine. In 2010, he opened a third restaurant called Red Rooster in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City. He founded FoodRepublic.com in 2011, and opened another restaurant, Ginny's Supper Club, in 2012. In the fall of 2012, Samuelsson, together with Clarion Hotels, launched a restaurant concept called Kitchen & Table. In addition, he has served as a visiting professor of international culinary science at the Umeå University School of Restaurant and Culinary Arts in Sweden, and has been an advisor to The Institute of Culinary Education in New York City.

Samuelsson is the author of Aquavit and the New Scandinavian Cuisine (2003), The Soul of a New Cuisine: A Discovery of the Foods and Flavors of Africa (2006), New American Table (2009), and Yes, Chef: A Memoir (2012). He also authored the Swedish cookbook, En smakresa: middagstips från Marcus Samuelsson, which was named Sweden’s Cookbook of the Year in 2002.

Samuelsson has received numerous honors for his work. In 1999, he was awarded the coveted James Beard Rising Star Chef Award for his work at Aquavit. In 2003, he was named "Best Chef: New York City" by the James Beard Foundation. Samuelsson has also been named a Great Chef of America by the Culinary Institute of America and a Global Leader of Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum. In 2009, he served as the guest chef for the first State Dinner of the Obama administration. He appeared on and won the reality television competition Top Chef Masters in 2010, and was a contestant on the fourth season of The Next Iron Chef in 2011. In 2013, Samuelsson won the James Beard Foundation award for Writing and Literature related to food.

Marcus Samuelsson was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on July 18, 2014.

Former model, restaurateur and caterer Norma Jean Darden was born in Newark, New Jersey. Darden enrolled at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York where she graduated with her B.A. degree in liberal arts in 1961. She then entered the world of modeling while at Sarah Lawrence and was a part of the historic 1973 Models of Versailles show in Paris, which featured twenty models, the first collective of African American models to grace a European fashion runway. Throughout her modeling career, Darden graced the pages of fashion magazines such as Bazaar, Glamour, Mademoiselle and Vogue. After a medical condition forced her to leave the world of modeling in 1975, Darden and her sister Carole launched a catering business. Three years later, they co-wrote a seminal cookbook on Southern cooking titled, Spoonbread & Strawberry Wine: Recipes and Reminiscences of a Family.

Darden then opened her first restaurant in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood called Spoonbread, Inc, which specialized in Southern cuisine. In 1997, Darden opened two more restaurants with Miss Mamie's Spoonbread Too and Miss Maude’s Spoonbread Too restaurants, both in Manhattan. Darden’s Spoonbread Catering has amassed a client list that includes Fortune 500 companies and celebrity clients like Bill Cosby and Oprah Winfrey. In addition, Darden appeared in the motion pictureThe Cotton Club in 1984 and has served as food stylist for the Eddie Murphy film, Boomerang. Additionally, Darden produced a one-woman show based on her book titled Spoonbread and Strawberry Wine, which premiered at the American Place Theatre.

Darden’s restaurants have been featured in publications as diverse as the New York Times, USA Today, Black Enterprise, Essence and Ebony magazines.

Additionally, Darden sits on the Board of the Salvation Army.

Norma Jean Darden was interviewed byThe HistoryMakers on May 14, 2012.

Legendary Atlanta restaurateur James Paschal was born on October 8, 1920, in McDuffie County, Georgia, to Henry and Lizzie Paschal. Paschal started his first business, a shoeshine stand, at the age of thirteen, and at fifteen, he opened his first store; Paschal’s mother ran the business while he attended school during the day. The grocery store was such a success that the owners from whom Paschal rented the property reclaimed it, at which time he relocated the business and expanded it to include a meat market and entertainment center with a juke box. The new store was called James’ Place; it remained successful and stayed open for four years until he was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1941, the same year he graduated from McDuffie Training School.

In 1947, Paschal and his brother, Robert, opened a sandwich shop in Atlanta, Georgia, selling only sandwiches and sodas. The sandwich shop was so successful that they moved to a larger location on Martin Luther King Drive. In 1957, the Paschal Brothers opened Paschal’s Restaurant; the new facility included a full service restaurant, banquet rooms, a 120 room hotel, and a jazz club called La Carousel Lounge. Paschal’s Restaurant served as an important meeting place during the Civil Rights Movement; Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his associates would hold strategy meetings there and families would reunite with relatives who had been arrested in protest marches. The Paschal Brothers also posted the bond for many of the protestors.

In 1978, the Paschals joined Dobbs House, Inc. in a joint venture to create Dobbs-Paschal Midfield Corporation; this food service company won the bid for a fifteen year contract at Atlanta Hartsfield Airport in 1980. After the contracted expired, the Paschals continued to provide food service at the airport, partnering with Concessions International, which was owned by Herman J. Russell.

In 1996, they sold the restaurant and hotel to Clark Atlanta University. In 2002, Paschal and Herman J. Russell opened a new Paschal’s Restaurant in the Castleberry Hills area of Atlanta, near the Georgia Dome. Paschal was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award for Business; he was also inducted into the Atlanta Hospitality and Tourism Hall of Fame. Paschal’s story, as told to Mae A. Kendall, was presented in the autobiography Serving Up Hope and Freedom. Paschal passed away on November 28, 2008 at the age of 88.

Leah Chase, "the Queen of Creole Cuisine," was born January 6, 1923, in New Orleans, Louisiana, of Catholic Creole parents. She was sent to New Orleans in 1937 to live with her aunt and to attend St. Mary's Academy for high school. Her first job out of school was at the Oriental Laundry in the French Quarter. A week later, Chase was hired by the Colonial Restaurant on Chartres Street. She has been in the restaurant industry ever since.

In 1945, she met and married musician Edgar "Dooky" Chase II, whose parents owned the Dooky Chase Restaurant. At first, Chase spent her time raising her children and sewing, but once the children were old enough to attend school she began to work at the restaurant three days a week. She changed the menu to serve hot meals at lunchtime to black men who were beginning to work in offices. She started out as a hostess, but she was soon redecorating the restaurant and working as chef. Because of Chase, the Dooky Chase Restaurant is known for its good food, antiques and original African American art.

Chase has received many awards both for her culinary genius and her community service including: the coveted New Orleans Times Picayune 1997 Loving Cup Award, the Weiss Award from the National Conference of Christians and Jews, the Torch of Liberty Award, the University of New Orleans Entrepreneurship Award, the Outstanding Woman Award from the National Council of Negro Women, and numerous honors from the NAACP. She serves on many organizational boards including the Arts Council of New Orleans, the New Orleans Museum of Art and the Urban League. Chase is a frequent guest on many of the televised cooking shows and was visiting culinary professor at Nichols State University in 1996. She has four children, sixteen grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

Chase passed away on June 1, 2019.