The Golden Arches in Black America

Dr. Chatelain set out to answer the question of how fast-food restaurants so thoroughly saturate black neighborhoods. McDonald’s has often been blamed for the rising rates of obesity and diabetes among black Americans. In Franchise, Chatelain uncovers a surprising history of cooperation among fast-food companies, black capitalists, and civil rights leaders, who–in the troubled years after King’s assassination–believed they found an economic answer to the problem of racial inequality.

Dr. Marcia Chatelain is a Professor of History and African American Studies at Georgetown University. She is also the author of South Side Girls: Growing up in the Great Migration. In 2021, Chatelain received the Pulitzer Prize in History, the Hagley Prize in Business History, and the Organization of American Historians (OAH) Lawrence W. Levine Award for Franchise. An active public speaker and educational consultant, Chatelain has received awards and honors from the Ford Foundation, the American Association of University Women, and the German Marshall Fund of the United States. In 2016, the Chronicle of Higher Education named her a Top Influencer in academia in recognition of her social media campaign #FergusonSyllabus, which implored educators to facilitate discussions about the crisis in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014.