H.A.N.R. : The Fall of Sambo's

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When researching these historic facts of hidden racism, there are times when racial imagery with an awful background runs head first into a property that MIGHT have gotten caught in the crosshairs, either intentionally or unintentionally. In these cases, what this story is may be influenced by the other, but here is the story of how the picanniny racial imagery destroyed a chain restaurant.

In 1899, Helen Banneman wrote "The Story of Little Black Sambo" a story about a black south indian boy with his parents Black Jumbo and Black Mumbo and his tigers and their adventures together..(well sort of the story itself is a bit weird that eventually culminated to butter and pancakes)

Even though Sambo is depicted in the story as South Indian, the imagery of Sambo was set up for failure from its inception starting with the name itself.

So lets go back even further.

Sambo or Zambo originally was a term used to describe mixed race people, similiar to mulatto. The name lingered until a character in Uncle Tom Cabin, named Sambo makes an appearance. Since then, the name was associated as a racial slur. Now this could be a case of Bannemen not quite understanding what the word meant to american audiences however, the ill-fated naming of the character would be the downfall and she would be the first casualty

But of this, the image of Sambo as a racial slur and Sambo, the Tamil child blended so now we have a image of a black south indian child with a name that is considered a racial slur.


In 1932, Langston Hughes once said "its amusing undoubtedly to the white child, but like an unkind word to one who has known too many hurts to enjoy the additional pain of being laughed at."

And soon Little Black Sambo found itself disappearing slowly from bookshelves, but not completely.

1957, Sam Battlestone and Newell Bohnett started a restaurant. They combined their names together and the restaurant, Sambo's was open for business. Sam and Newell understood the namesake that was shared so, they used images of Sambo through the restaurant, so it was common to see a black kid in a turban playing with tigers on the walls.

By 1970's, they were pressured to change their name completely, so they changed it to The Jolly Tiger, but only briefly when they reverted the name back to Sambos.The chain fell into bankruptcy in 1981 and would soon find itself selling their properties to Dennys. One lone Sambos left standing in Santa Barbara was the last one left until May of 2020 during the protests of the death of George Floyd. In this awakening of the normalization of racism, in June 2020, Sambos formerly closed and rebranded itself as Chad's.