Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America (Marcia Chatelain)

Staff Pick: This book dives deep into Black America’s complex relationship with the world’s most recognizable fast food chain. Written by local author and professor, Marcia Chatelain, this book will transform your understanding of capitalism and racial justice. Winner of the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for History. - Brinda

WINNER • 2021 PULITZER PRIZE IN HISTORY
Winner • 2022 James Beard Foundation Book Award [Writing]

The “stunning” (David W. Blight) untold history of how fast food became one of the greatest generators of black wealth in America.

Just as The Color of Law provided a vital understanding of redlining and racial segregation, Marcia Chatelain’s Franchise investigates the complex interrelationship between black communities and America’s largest, most popular fast food chain. Taking us from the first McDonald’s drive-in in San Bernardino to the franchise on Florissant Avenue in Ferguson, Missouri, in the summer of 2014, Chatelain shows how fast food is a source of both power—economic and political—and despair for African Americans. As she contends, fast food is, more than ever before, a key battlefield in the fight for racial justice.