Posted on 02/24/2014 7:22:27 AM PST by Gamecock
COLUMBIA, SC — Maurice Bessinger, who was as famous for his barbecue shops and sauces as he was for his diehard segregation stands, has died at 83.
A Korean war veteran, a gentlemanly demeanor, a businessman who grew a restaurant business that employed 200 employees, a devout Baptist who supported missionaries abroad, Bessinger in many ways had a background as American as the finger-licking tasty Southern food his establishments were known for.
"I'm just a fair man. I want to be known as a hard-working, Christian man that loves God and wants to further (God's) work throughout the world as I have been doing throughout the last 25 years," he told a State reporter in 2000.
But he was also known for his deeply divisive racial stands – he believed slavery was good for black people, for example – and his losing stand in a landmark civil rights lawsuit brought by famed South Carolina lawyer and later federal Judge Matthew Perry. His racial beliefs, though outmoded in today’s modern world, were once common among many Southern whites.
In 2000, after The State newspaper disclosed that Bessinger was distributing pro-slavery tracts at his Maurice’s Gourmet Barbecue headquarters in West Columbia – under the shadow of an enormous Confederate flag he flew outside – people began boycotting his eateries. Stores and the U.S. military yanked his well-known mustard barbecue sauce from their shelves. He would claim the boycott cost him millions.
At the time, Bessinger – who denied in interviews that slave-owners treated blacks cruelly – was also distributing pro-slavery audio tapes and gave customers a discount if they bought his literature. South Carolina had “biblical slavery,” Bessinger claimed, which was different than other kinds of slavery.
In addition to triggering a boycott of Bessinger products, the disclosure of his pro-slavery views prompted SCANA to ban company vehicles from being parked in his restaurant’s parking lots.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Bessinger was a crusading white supremacist, doing everything he could to deny blacks equal rights. He put signs in his stores saying blacks weren’t welcome, He believed, he said in interviews, that any form of race mixing might lead to impure dilution of white blood.
"YOU are WHITE because your Ancestors believed in SEGREGATION!" reads an old tract that promoted a group Bessinger once was president of: the National Association for the Preservation of White People.
In the 1960s, Bessinger tried to prevent blind black singer Stevie Wonder from singing at the University of South Carolina. "You may not agree with my feelings that jungle music is for jungle people, but the hatred and upheavals caused by recent forced race-mixing must concern us both," Bessinger wrote the then-USC president.
In 1963, Bessinger became angry at a Spartanburg restaurant owner who had integrated his restaurant. Bessinger met with other restaurant owners to force the man to resign as president of the S.C. Restaurant Association.
In July 1964, Bessinger - who at that time owned four Piggie Park restaurants - stood in the door of one of his stores to prevent a black minister from entering. Bessinger would allow blacks to buy food to take out, but not to eat in his restaurant. African-Americans represented by then civil rights lawyer Matthew Perry, took him to court.
In 1968, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Bessinger , 8-0.
In 2000, Bessinger told a State reporter he had no regrets about fighting that lawsuit.
"It is really a constitutional right - whether a man has the right to run his business without governmental interference," he said then.
In 2004, Bessinger contributed $1,000 to a candidate for the U.S. Senate who openly advocated secession – just as South Carolinians had done in 1860 in an act that triggered the Civil War.
The chain of restaurants owned by Bessinger is now in the hands of his family’s second generation.
A few months ago, they pulled down the last two of the Confederate flags that once flew proudly over his restaurants.
In an interview with The State in October, second-generation Lloyd Bessinger said he was purposely shifting away from the politics that were important to his father and moving towards focusing on the business.
The family-run business wants to stay neutral and appeal to people, whatever their political party, he said.
“Dad liked politics,” Lloyd Bessinger told State reporter Kristy Rupon. “That’s not something we’re interested in doing. We want to serve great barbecue.”
Thompson Funeral Home in West Columbia is in charge.
Some will disagree, but I’ll go central Texas on you. In the Lockhart Barbecue Belt, barbecue doesn’t have sauce.
Welcome to N.C. and you’re crazy for not liking our BBQ ;)!
Now, how many times in your life have you read an obituary that did nothing but attack a man not only for his political beliefs, but more importantly his Christian beliefs?
While Maurice Bessinger’s political beliefs may be a bit antiquated after being relegated to a remote outpost of the American political spectrum by secular leftist agitators and their media lapdogs, he had the determination and the right to express his views under the auspices of his private business and the rights guaranteed to him under the Constitution.
The bitter irony would be that in the end, it was those same secular leftists, who in theory championed an end to the Southern institution of segregation that in fact attempted to force Mr. Bessinger and his private business to become an actual victim of their wicked form of social and economic segregation.
God prefers Kansas City barbecue. Everyone knows that.
Mustard based. It’s in Leviticus.
Leviticus 11:3 - "Whatsoever parteth the hoof, and is clovenfooted, and cheweth the cud, among the beasts, that shall ye eat. Though verily without mustard sauce which is an abomination to the LORD."
It's there in the Revised New Standard Improved version. Look it up.
Any idea which Spartanburg restaurant Maurice tangled with in 1963 over segregation? I think I could guess correctly but just checking.
Deuteronomy 14:8
The pig is also unclean; although it has a divided hoof, it does not chew the cud. You are not to eat their meat or touch their carcasses unless cooked all night over wood coals and slathered in mustard sauce, which the Lord finds pleasing.
There oyu have it. Mustard brings sanctification.
Rest in peace.
Maybe Allah.
Only way you can eat that vinegar, mustard stuff.
I think we have disagreed on some other things, but we are joined at the ribs on this.
Misguided soul. RIP.
Great American bump!
“”YOU are WHITE because your Ancestors believed in SEGREGATION!” “
Nope. We’re white because people didn’t travel much and had standards. Today, we travel and have few standards.
Some damn fine BBQ. Whatever your thoughts about the man himself, he was a character and a huge part of Columbia history. It saddens me to see him raked over the coals in the media, and I say these things as someone who used to work for him & who didn’t much care for him personally. Also, when I worked there in the late 80s, there were blacks working in “the Plant” who’d been there for decades, who ran the place by dint of their seniority. Piggie Park couldn’t’ve gotten along without them.
Have a little respect for the dead and for his family, folks.
(God prefers Kansas City barbecue. Everyone knows that.)
I live in Wichita now and can’t find good barbecue here
One might say it's because God has forsaken Wichita, but I won't pretend to speak for Him. But some people have it worse. I was in Chicago once and heard a couple of people raving about how the Chili's ribs were the best they had ever had. You just have to feel sorry for people like that.
You have FReepmail.
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