Komla Agbeli Gbedemah - Howard Johnson's Restaurant Incident

Howard Johnson's Restaurant Incident

In the United States, he is most widely known from an October 10, 1957, incident when U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower apologized to him after he was refused service in a Howard Johnson's restaurant in Dover, Delaware. He reportedly told the staff "The people here are of a lower social status than I am but they can drink here and we can't. You can keep the orange juice and the change, but this is not the last you have heard of this." Some sources suspect that the incident, which resulted in some publicity, may have been engineered by Gbedemah's secretary. Nonetheless, it resulted in Gbedemah being invited to breakfast at the White House.

Read more about this topic:  Komla Agbeli Gbedemah

Famous quotes containing the words howard, johnson, restaurant and/or incident:

    I believe that Harmon would be the easiest to defeat, though he might gain much strength from the Republicans. Clark would surely lose New York. I am beginning to feel that by some stroke of genius they may name Woodrow Wilson, and that seems a pretty hard tussle.
    —William Howard Taft (1857–1930)

    It is from the blues that all that may be called American music derives its most distinctive character.
    —James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938)

    In a restaurant one is both observed and unobserved. Joy and sorrow can be displayed and observed “unwittingly,” the writer scowling naively and the diners wondering, What the hell is he doing?
    David Mamet (b. 1947)

    Every incident connected with the breaking up of the rivers and ponds and the settling of the weather is particularly interesting to us who live in a climate of so great extremes. When the warmer days come, they who dwell near the river hear the ice crack at night with a startling whoop as loud as artillery, as if its icy fetters were rent from end to end, and within a few days see it rapidly going out. So the alligator comes out of the mud with quakings of the earth.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)