The Famous Door Café

The cafe opened into a state where segregation was written into law. Railroad cars were separated by race from 1891, and several towns adopted residential segregation ordinances between 1910 and the 1920s. By 1930 Black Texans could not attend sports or cultural events, eat at the better restaurants or stay at the finer hotels unless those places kept separate accommodations. Sweatt v. Painter opened the University of Texas law school in 1950 and Brown v. Board of Education followed in 1954, but in 1956 Texas voters approved a referendum against compulsory integrated schools. Legal segregation ended in the 1960s.

What the plaque says

The Famous Door Café The Famous Door served the African American community in Kerrville for seventy years as a café, grocery store, and most prominently, as a dance hall. Henry Kelley established his café and grocery in the 1920s, at a time when Jim Crow laws segregated and restricted all aspects of life. The café became an important part of the African American community, hosting a 1938 dance for Emancipation Day and a 1942 dance to benefit the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (later the March of Dimes). Edward Bratcher, Sr., a prominent African American chef at the Bluebonnet Hotel, became manager and changed the name to Bratcher's Place. In 1944, property owner A. L. Lewis sold Bratcher and his wife, Cordellia Mills Bratcher, the restaurant and other adjacent property. With segregation excluding African Americans from music venues, entrepreneurs created an alternative known as the Chitlin' Circuit. Tour stops hosted local performers and nationally-known jazz, rock and rhythm and blues musicians. During this time, the restaurant began hosting musical acts and changed its name to the Famous Door Café, advertising as being "famous for friends, food and fun." As new musical trends developed, The Famous Door inegrated its lineup, including groups from Kerrville and San Antonio often credited as early developers of psychedlic rock in the 1960s. Patrons later recalled The Famous Door as the first integrated business in Kerrville that welcomed all customers before it closed in 1996. Music provided a common language that helped bridge cultural and generational gaps. (2012)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Schreiner Mansion — 0.8 mi
  The 1879 downtown home of Charles Schreiner, the Alsatian-born merchant, banker and rancher whose store and mohair trade built Kerrville.
• Treue der Union Monument — 15 mi
  An 1866 German-language monument in Comfort over the graves of Hill Country Unionists killed at the Nueces in 1862, its flag of thirty-six stars kept at half-staff.
• Old Tunnel State Park — 20 mi
  A railroad tunnel abandoned in 1942 that now shelters up to three million Mexican free-tailed bats, who fly out each evening from May through October.
• Vereins Kirche and Main Street — 22 mi
  The octagonal Society Church on Fredericksburg's market square, rebuilt in stone in the 1930s, beside a main street laid out like a Rhine village.

More markers nearby

• Doyle Colored School — steps away
• Mount Olive Baptist Church — steps away
• Barnett Chapel Methodist Church — steps away
• H-E-B — 0.4 mi