“Bigotry was the blue plate special”: How Cracker Barrel went from anti-gay to angering the GOP

Late last week, the Texas Family Project, an organization "fighting to make Texas families the most powerful force in Austin by building a political cavalry of pro-family forces," sent out a tweet to its followers letting them know that "Cracker Barrel has fallen." 

"A once family friendly establishment has caved to the mob," they wrote, before posting a screenshot of a webpage from Cracker Barrel Old Country Store's website. 

The restaurant chain, which has over 600 locations across the United States, had sometime last year posted a series of photos of people sitting in an oversized rocking chair decked out with rainbow spindles. Overtop of the collage was a small banner that read: "Cracker Barrel LGBTQ Alliance." 

That year, the company said they were "Bringing the Front Porch to PRIDE," and had attended Nashville PRIDE, just as they do every year, and "celebrated by bringing our Front Porch with rainbow rockers (including our giant Pride rocker!) to show our support for our employees, guests, and all those in the LGBTQ+ community." 

On the surface, this seems like another incident of members of the far-right looking for ways to perpetuate a culture war they can't quite define, much like in the case of the proposed conservative boycott against Chick-fil-A over a months-old posting about diversity, equity and inclusion on their corporate website. 

And certainly, there are elements of that, but I think that the revelation that the decidedly "conservative-coded" Cracker Barrel not only has queer employees, but supports them and their communities, may come as a far greater shock to some on the far-right. This is because for a very long time, Cracker Barrel's stated corporate beliefs actually matched the personal bigotry of many of their customers. 

It wasn't until the queer community began to push back that Cracker Barrel began to change their ways. 

In August 1991, activists all across the South demonstrated in front of the restaurant chain after announcing they refused to hire anyone who "failed to demonstrate normal heterosexual values." The company had just fired an estimated 11 employees due to their sexual orientation. 

According to a press release from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force titled "When Bigotry is the Blue Plate Special," which is now held by the University of North Texas archives, queer activists visited Cracker Barrel's corporate headquarters in Lebanon, Tennessee, and ordered the minimum cup of coffee or soda. They took up 97% of the tables and "sat-in" for three hours, effectively grinding an entire brunch service to a halt. 

Cracker Barrel set up a camera to video everyone who came through the door that day. A smoke bomb was thrown at demonstrators in the parking lot, which was continuously looped by cars decorated with homophobic slurs. One of those cars tried to ram into the crowd, but was unsuccessful. However, ultimately, no one was arrested and no one was hurt. 

"Cracker Barrel presumed they could get away with this policy because they thought we were just a bunch of 'fags' and 'dykes'and nobody would care,"said Ivy Young, the group's director. "They got a huge shock when they discovered that lesbians, gays and people of good conscience around the country are speaking out and protesting their bigotry." 

A few months later, Cracker Barrel reversed course and announced they wouldn't ban gay employees from working at the restaurant. That said, things wouldn't really turn around in any measurable way at the restaurant for years. 

As Mother Jones reported in 1994, continued, vocal on-site protests had brought a lot of negative publicity to the restaurant. 

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"But some reports have it that more people are actually patronizing CB in support of its anti-gay policies," the publication said. "Although the policy is not illegal–gays and lesbians aren't protected from discrimination by any federal law — CB declined to comment." 

In 2002, Cracker Barrel was one of only three companies to earn a zero on Human Rights Campaign's 2002 Corporate Equality Index, which rates major U.S. companies on their policies toward gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender employees, consumers and investors. That was the year that 58% of the restaurant chain's shareholders finally agreed that it was time to add sexual orientation to the company's non-discrimination policy after only 9% of the shareholders had voted to do so the year prior. 

For another decade, Cracker Barrel was dogged by poor ratings from the HRC, but by 2016, the company adopted a pro-LGBT stance, eventually developing an internal diversity council and, of course,  releasing a collection of rainbow merch. 

"We believe it's crucially important to foster this environment for our employees for many reasons," Cracker Barrel spokeswoman Janella Escobar told the Knoxville News Sentinel in 2019. "The guest experience should never exceed the employee experience, because our success begins with the employee experience.

"Happy employees create happy guests," she added. "We want our employee community to reflect the diversity of the communities we serve."

While it is very, very easy this time of year to become cynical about "rainbow capitalism" and corporate allyship, it is noteworthy when companies change their policies and behaviors surrounding the queer community publicly. This is because every single one of those changes is underpinned by decades of other hard-won victories achieved by — as Ivy Young put it in 1991 — the "lesbians, gays and people of good conscience." 

So this PRIDE, especially in the face of growing threats of violent homophobia and bigotry, I encourage you to remain skeptical of all the banks, grocery stores and fast food joints that deck suddenly themselves out in rainbow flags when June 1 hits.

But I also encourage you to seek out the stories of the queer activists and allies who got them there.