Twenty five black customers were not provided with seating at a Wild Wing Cafe restaurant in North Charleston, South Carolina this past July.
Michael Brown (pictured) claims that he and his friends had to wait two hours for a table, but were then told they would not be seated in a certain section because a white customer felt “threatened” (video below).
“[The manager] said there’s a situation where one of our customers feels threatened by your party, so she asked us not to seat you in our section, which totally alarmed all of us because we’re sitting there peaceably for two hours,” Brown told WNEM. A member of the the group started filming Brown and the restaurant manager with a camera phone, which led to the manager asking them to leave. “She said, 'I have a right to deny you service.' I said, 'So you’re asking me to leave because you’re upset because he was recording you, after we’ve waited for two hours, and after you’ve already pretty much discriminated on us,' and she answered 'yes,''' said Brown.
After unsuccessfully calling Wild Wing Cafe’s corporate office, Brown posted on Facebook on Friday:
I will never go to Wild wings cafe in N. Chs again! We (Party of 25 family and friends) waited 2hrs, patiently and were refused service because another customer (White) felt threatened by us. This type of racial discrimination is unacceptable and we have to put a STOP TO IT. The manager looked me dead in the face and said she was refusing us service because she had a right to and simply she felt like it. DO NOT SUPPORT THIS ESTABLISHMENT… PLEASE SHARE THIS POST… We need your help. Debra Stokes, chief marketing officer for Wild Wing Cafe, told WNEM: "We got alerted through social media, so we always encourage our customers to respond to us or to comment on our social media pages.”
“We had a conversation. It was a really good conversation. He and many of his family and friends were there about a month ago, and they are regular customers of ours. So, they were having a going away party, and they just didn’t receive the experience that they have come to know and love.”
Brown said that he and his group did receive an apology and an offer of a free meal, but are not completely satisfied. He did not mention if there would be a lawsuit.
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