In 1966, Burger Chef in Natchez, Miss., was in compliance with the public accommodations section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, meaning that the local franchise had integrated its workforce and was serving all customers regardless of race.
Ku Klux Klansmen didn’t like this and soon vowed to put the local Burger Chef out of business.
FBI documents obtained by the LSU Cold Case Project provide insight into the Klan’s attempt to shut down the fast food restaurant.
On March 16, 1966, an executive with Burger Chef informed the Department of Justice that its newly-opened store in Natchez had been targeted by white men who opposed the racial integration of the store.
The national restaurant chain was famous at the time for its 15-cent hamburgers.
Following the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Ku Klux Klan in Natchez and its environs began concentrating on disrupting the implementation of the new Civil Rights laws through its typical means of harassment and intimidation.
In his letter to federal authorities, Louis J. Michot, Director of Franchise Sales for Burger Chef in Louisiana and Mississippi, based in Lafayette, LA, explained to John Doar, the Assistant Attorney General of Civil Rights, that all company locations served both black and white customers. He said there were no seating facilities and explained that customers would place and pick up their orders inside and then return to their vehicles.
Attached to Michot’s letter were circulars put out by the Klan that urged white people not to patronize Burger Chef while Klansmen also conducted a campaign of harassment and intimidation of white customers.
Michot, a business entrepreneur who had served in the Louisiana House of Representatives and would go on to serve as the elected state Education Superintendent from 1972 to 1976, operated 45 Burger Chef restaurants in Louisiana and Mississippi. He reported to Doar that the constant harassment at the Natchez location was intended to “injure our business.”
Michot wrote that the manager of the Natchez Burger Chef had met with Klansmen concerning the distribution of the anti-Burger Chef circulars “but to comply with their demands would place us in violation” of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He asked if there were legal grounds to fight this harassment, adding, “What is the Civil Rights Division prepared to do in order to support and protect business firms from such intimidation?”
On March 24, an official with the DOJ contacted the FBI Director to request that bureau agents conduct a preliminary investigation into Michot’s allegations that “certain persons were attempting to interfere with a business in Natchez, Mississippi, which is complying with the public accommodations title of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.”
Loren Howard, the 30-year-old manager of the newly-opened Burger Chef, told FBI agents that the first circular, printed on a mimeograph machine, was distributed throughout Natchez and the area in February. The circular threatened the well being of any white person who went to Burger Chef. The sheet was signed by the United Klans of America, Adams County, Miss. Howard said business fell off for a short time before rebounding. In all, three circulars were put out by the Klan in February and March.
MEETING WITH KLANSMEN
With the goal of ending the harassment, Howard met with E.L. McDaniel, head of the Mississippi Realm of the UKA after a third circular was distributed by Klansmen. Howard told the FBI that the assistant manager of the local Burger Chef was Bill McDaniel, the 19-year-old brother of the Klan leader. Bill McDaniel introduced Howard to E.L. McDaniel. The Klan leader then set up a meeting between Klansmen, led by Reggie Carter, and Howard at the Glass House Restaurant. The purpose of the meeting was for Howard to explain to Klansmen why the restaurant served Blacks. Howard said that prior to the meeting E.L. McDaniel had told him that white people should stick together.
Klansmen made several suggestions on what Howard should do to separate black and white customers, including setting aside a special order window for blacks only or setting up a partition separating the races while inside the store. Howard told Klansmen the company would do neither.
After this meeting, Pete Domingue, a Burger Chef supervisor based in Lafayette, told the FBI that a second meeting was planned with the Klan to resolve the matter and that E.L. McDaniel had indicated all would be settled at this meeting. Domingue asked the FBI’s resident Natchez agent Clarence Prospere if the FBI would halt its preliminary investigation to see if things could be worked with the Klan. Domingue indicated that his boss, Michot, felt that if the investigation stopped, Burger Chef’s financial losses due to the harassment might end.
Prospere said that a complaint had already been filed by the company regarding a possible violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and that the FBI would continue investigating regardless of Michot’s concerns.
At that second meeting, some of the Klansmen, about 10 in all, indicated they would not patronize Burger Chef. Additionally, Klansmen told the manager, Howard, that their main objection was not that blacks and whites were intermixed in the line to order but that “a car of full of Negroes would be parked next to cars occupied by white people.”
PHYSICAL ASSAULT ON BURGER CHEF EMPLOYEE
On March 31, Howard, observing cars occupied by white men writing down license plate numbers of Burger Chef customers, sent two of his employees – Bill McDaniel and Murray Seals, age 19 – to write down the license plate numbers of the vehicles occupied by the white men.
McDaniel drove the short distance down the drive to where the Klansmen were located. As Seals got out of the car and began writing down license plate numbers, he was quickly noticed by Klansmen.
When recording the license number of a white 1964 Chevrolet Biscayne, Seals heard someone shout: “Get that paper!”
Then there was another shout, “Get that boy!”
Seals said a white man with blonde hair emerged from the car, threw him to the ground on his side, twisted his head and rubbed his face in the dirt. Someone also took Seals’ list of driver license numbers from his clipboard.
Howard, the manager, called police.
Natchez Police Chief J.T. Robinson told the FBI his officers had been notified of the incident at Burger Chef at 9:35 p.m. on March 31. Four officers responded.
Robinson said he had previously told his officers to keep Klansmen from parking on the Burger Chef parking lot and they then began parking along the shoulder of the road near the restaurant’s drive.
Robinson identified four Klansmen who were at the scene when Seals was attacked, including, Reggie Carter, a leader of a local unit of the UKA. Carter had been the lead spokesman for Klansmen at meetings with the Burger Chef manager held at the Glass House Restaurant.
Carter operated a grocery store and the American Gasoline Station, both housed in a building on North Pine where his family lived in the rear. UKA Klansmen had urged Carter and his group to stop the harassment of Burger Chef but this only served to make Carter hostile, according to Klan sources.
Members of Carter’s group spotted at the Burger Chef were Klansmen C.D. Freeman, a self-employed painter; W.S. Torrence, a construction superintendent; and John W. Barber, a salesman at the local Oldsmobile dealership who was among four men arrested by the Mississippi Highway Safety Patrol in 1964 for assault with intent to kill Civil Rights worker Bruce Lloyd Payne. The charges against the men were later dropped.
Natchez Police Lt. Dennis Lewis said he interviewed Reggie Carter at the scene and that he and the other Klansmen said they could not identify the white man who attacked Seals. Both local authorities and the FBI were certain that the Klansmen knew who the assailant was but were protecting him.
VICTIMS OF KLAN HARASSMENT
As the FBI conducted multiple interviews during its preliminary investigation, it located witnesses who had been harassed.
Charles Stevens of Ferriday, LA, said that after buying a meal at Burger Chef he left the restaurant and while driving down the road the lights of a white pickup flashed behind him just before it pulled up beside him. There were three or four men inside. They shouted, “We are in the Klan,” and told Stevens not to return to Burger Chef.
Carmen Etta Lewis of Natchez said she received a call at home around 7 or 8 p.m. A male voice said, “I am a Klansman and have been seeing your car at Burger Chef.” The caller told her that white people were boycotting Burger Chef and told her to cooperate.
An hour later, the phone rang again. The same caller said there had been trouble at Burger Chef between Black men and white women. An informant told the FBI that Klansman Reggie Carter made up the stories of fights at the restaurant and of Black men harassing white girls with the goal of making white people think Burger Chef was a trouble spot that should be avoided.
The manager of the local Orkin pest control office, Bobby Thrash, told FBI agents that he received a call from an unknown male who asked Thrash to boycott Burger Chef and to stop sending Orkin trucks there. Thrash said he refused the request and tried without success to meet with the unidentified caller.
ARSON & BOMBING THREATS, TACKS, DEATH THREAT
In mid-April, the FBI received an alarming report that Klansman James “Jimmy” Scarborough of Ferriday, located in Concordia Parish across the Mississippi River from Natchez, asked a bureau informant to deliver a package of two dynamite caps to Natchez. The informant refused but said Scarborough told him that the Burger Chef in Natchez was not going to burn, apparently meaning that plans to torch the restaurant had been canceled and that it would be bombed instead.
The bureau immediately informed Burger Chef management and local, state and federal authorities of the possible bomb threat. Natchez police, including Chief Robinson, surveilled the restaurant for four straight nights without incident.
The informant later reported that the package was to be delivered to Jack Seale, a notorious Natchez Klansmen who, like Scarborough, was linked to murders, beatings and arsons and would be charged, but never convicted, in the bombing of a Natchez jewelry store in December 1966.
A few days after the initial report of the bomb threat against Burger Chef, the informant indicated that Scarborough still had the dynamite caps.
In mid-June, Howard, the Burger Chef manager, told agents that a young male customer told him that he overheard some white men talking about burning down the restaurant. The next day, someone threw tacks in the parking lot resulting in flat tires for customers.
From late June to early July, Howard received six threatening phone calls, each coming about midnight. On most of the calls, the caller remained silent despite pleas from Howard to talk. On the night of Tuesday, July 5, the phone rang again and when Howard repeatedly asked the caller to identify himself, the caller said, “You are dead!”
Again, Howard attempted to engage the caller who only repeated, “You are dead!
“When?” Howard asked.
“Wednesday,” the caller said.
PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION CLOSED
FBI reports from the Jackson field office to the FBI Director summarized the preliminary investigation as one into the “Klan boycott at Burger Chef, an integrated establishment and related violence, including assault on an employee, intimidation of customers by placing tacks in the parking lot, recording license tag numbers and making harassing phone calls.”
During the summer, yet another Klan flier was circulated. It was entitled, “A Cheap Hamburger Costs A Lot More Than 15 Cents.”
The flier thanked those whites who didn’t do business with Burger Chef: “When informed about the unwholly (sic) plot to bring teen-agers of both races together at Burger Chef, you were thankful that someone cared enough about you to inform you of the purpose of a seemingly innocent drive-in-establishment,” and thanked them for preserving their white heritage.
“The negroes of Natchez need a drive-in restaurant … LET THEM HAVE THE BURGER CHEF!”
FBI agents learned that Klansmen Reggie Carter, Charles Davidson and Joe Hardy were involved in the printing and distribution of the flier. One source said the fliers were printed at Davidson’s home.
Photos of Klansmen believed to have been involved in the plot to shut down Burger Chef were shown to witnesses and others affected by the case but none of the main witnesses were able to make identifications. The identity of the white male who physically attacked Burger Chef employee Murray Seals was never revealed.
Eventually, the Klan seemed to lose interest in Burger Chef, which continued operations for years. Burger Chef officials were ready for the preliminary investigation to end, fearing a full investigation would result in the Klan blaming Burger Chef and ramping up its intimidation tactics even more.
At the time, the FBI was investigating multiple Klan crimes, including the local murder of Ben Chester White, a 67-year-old Black man killed by Adams County Klansmen in June.
The preliminary investigation into the Klan harassment of Burger Chef was closed during the fall.
Burger Chef had begun operations in 1954 and by its peak in 1973 had more than 1,000 locations in the U.S. The company no longer operates today.
