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:

    Action for which I become responsible, or for which my administration becomes responsible, shall be within the law.
    —William Howard Taft (1857–1930)

    I know not, Madam, that you have a right, upon moral principles, to make your readers suffer so much.
    —Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)

    A restaurant is a fantasy—a kind of living fantasy in which diners are the most important members of the cast.
    Warner Leroy, U.S. restaurateur, founder of Maxwell’s Plum restaurant, New York City. New York Times (July 9, 1976)

    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)