Georgia Gilmoreplayed a polar role in the civil rightfulness movement — one of feeding and funding those at the frontlines . A marvellous cook , she took it upon herself to bring together a occult social club - esque group of cleaning woman who used food to fuel the movement . Gilmore wasstrong - willedand uncoerced to utter up against racial iniquity , two attribute that served her well when theMontgomery Bus Boycottbegan .
A large issue of people rallied together to help the bus boycott ’s success and ensure that alternative methods of transportation were useable to grim people , who often bank on public transportation . Gilmore helped feedthose involved with organizing the protests and used the profits she made from selling solid food to devote for insurance , accelerator , and repair for the hundred of vehicles that took Black laborer to and from their position of body of work . “ You do n’t hear Miss Gilmore ’s name as often as Rosa Parks , but her action were just as decisive , ” Julia Turshen , source ofFeed the Resistance , toldThe New York Timesin 2019 . “ She literally fed the movement . She sustained it . ”
Georgia Gilmore and the “Club From Nowhere”
Gilmore was born Montgomery , Alabama , on February 5 , 1920 . She worked as a head cook at a Andrew Dickson White - only cafeteria in business district Montgomery , as a cleaner , and as a nanny - accoucheuse . She was also a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP ) . Sheraised six childrenand was alive in the civic rights movement .
Her activism be her her job as a cook at the National Lunch Company . Her employer also blacklist her , hampering her power to regain other work . So Gilmore metamorphose her menage kitchen into an informal restaurant where people pivotal to the motility gathered , irrespective of their backgrounds . She became a confidante forMartin Luther King Jr. , who often halt crucial meetings at her home , and PresidentsLyndon B. JohnsonandJohn F. Kennedyreportedlyate in her kitchen .
Gilmore also rallied other grim fair sex to bestow to the drive , assist them coiffe up their own solid food - betray ventures that upgrade fund for civil rightfield . These women fall together to shape the “ Club From Nowhere , ” advert so that bloodless people would n’t overhear on . They gift their collected immediate payment at boycott participants ’ meetings each week .
Georgia Gilmore’s Legacy
When a Montgomery County grand jury indicted King and dozens of the motion ’s other leaders in February 1956 , Gilmore was among the many domesticated worker who evidence in their defense . She recounted the anti-Semite showdown she had experienced while aim public coach .
In her testimony , Gilmore identified the motorcoach number one wood who once told her to enter a bus from the back door , after she paid her menu , and sped off before she could do so . Shetold the jurist , “ When I paid my menu and they amaze the money , they do n’t know Negro money from white money . ” The incident had prompted Gilmore to stage her own personal heap boycott month before the Montgomery Bus Boycott kicked off .
The Montgomery Bus Boycott lasted over a year , terminate only on December 20 , 1956 , when the Supreme Court ruled that segregation breach the fourteenth Amendment . But Gilmore ’s activism did n’t blockade when the charabanc boycott did .
She continued to play for the lawsuit until she died on Friday , March 9 , 1990 — the 25th day of remembrance of the march from Selma to Montgomery . She was in the kitchenpreparing macaroni and cheese and chickenfor the foot soldier the day she died ; her family served that smasher to the mourners at her visitation . In 1995 , the Alabama Historical Commission erected a historical mark in front of her house on Dericote Street to differentiate her bequest . Her recipescan still be found in various cookbooks .
