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:
“Think of submitting our measure to the advice of politicians! I would as soon submit the subject of the equality of a goose to a fox.”
—Anna Howard Shaw (1847–1919)
“I had many problems in my conduct of the office being contrasted with President Kennedy’s conduct in the office, with my manner of dealing with things and his manner, with my accent and his accent, with my background and his background. He was a great public hero, and anything I did that someone didn’t approve of, they would always feel that President Kennedy wouldn’t have done that.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“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)