Robert Gilbert was taking out the trash one night at his father’s restaurant in Chatham when two long black Cadillac limousines pulled up.
It was 1960, and he was in his early 20s working at Gilbert’s Restaurant, which had garnered a reputation as a safe haven for Black travelers in the South during the Jim Crow era.
Gilbert watched in awe as the driver of one of the limos opened the back door and out stepped Fats Domino, the iconic singer-songwriter, pianist and pioneer of rock and roll music. Now in his 80s, Gilbert calls this one of the most memorable moments of his life.
“Fats Domino was my Elvis Presley,” he said. “I had all of his records.”
Gilbert remembers the singer coming into the restaurant, though it was almost closing time and practically empty, and eating several servings of his mother’s pinto beans and corn bread. He was mesmerized by how the ceiling fan flung flashes of light from Domino’s diamond ring.
Other singers like Lloyd Price and actors like James Earl Jones also ate at Gilbert’s Restaurant and sometimes even boarded at the Gilbert family home, which eventually became a tourist home with added rooms to accommodate all of the travelers.
Black folks, famous or not, traveling through the South during segregation had very few safe places to stop, eat or lodge, Gilbert said.
“Once you passed the Mason-Dixon line, you couldn’t find anywhere to go into,” he said. “I know this from experience. You might find a roadside stand, but most times, they would deny you any kind of service.”
Gilbert’s father, the Rev. Robert Gregory Gilbert, opened the restaurant in 1945 to provide a space for Black travelers and locals alike.
During the Jim Crow era, an annual guide called “The Negro Motorist Green Book” listed businesses and amenities where Black travelers would be welcome and safe.
Gilbert’s Restaurant was never included in the Green Book, Gilbert said, but it gained popularity through word of mouth throughout the second half of the 20th century, until it closed in 1999.
Since then, the building has fallen into disrepair, and Gilbert was actually considering tearing it down until he learned about the state’s historic designations.
After he applied with the help of local historian Ina Dixon, the restaurant was added to the Virginia Landmarks Register and the National Register of Historic Places earlier this year.
“The restaurant has always been locally beloved,” Dixon said in an email. And its inclusion on state and local historic registers helps the story of Gilbert’s “as a haven for civil rights and community” to be known to a wider audience.
These listings also allow the building to qualify for historic tax credits, should it be renovated for a new use in the future, Dixon said.
In June, the restaurant was also approved for a state highway marker, which will stand outside the building to recognize its history. The text for the marker was finalized at the Virginia Board of Historic Resources meeting Thursday, along with text for another local marker on the Danville Canal.
“It makes me proud,” Gilbert said. “I’ve never been one to speak a lot about myself, but the fact that my mom and dad, people with such limited formal education, would be able to create something noted as historical, I’m proud of their achievement and I’m proud to be a part of it.”
Much more than a restaurant
When Gilbert’s father opened the restaurant 80 years ago, it was much more than an eatery. Back then, the business was spread across several buildings on North Main Street in Chatham and sold farming supplies, animal feed, motoring products, gasoline, produce and canned goods.
In the early 1950s, Gilbert’s father combined everything under one roof in the building that still stands in the northern part of the Pittsylvania County town.
“He brought gas tanks out here, oil tanks,” Gilbert said. “When farmers killed cattle, we would grind the beef, slice up hams. But he always had a section for people to eat.”
This was before the U.S. interstate highway system was built, and one of the most direct routes between Washington and the Carolinas went right down Main Street in Chatham, Gilbert said.
State approves Hippodrome marker
At its quarterly meeting Thursday, the Board of Historic Resources considered four state highway marker applications related to Danville and Pittsylvania County.
The board approved a marker application on the Hippodrome, a Danville theater built for Black audiences and entertainers in 1917.
Two others were chosen as alternates: an application for Northside High School, the first school for Black students in Pittsylvania County, and one for Clarence Smith, a Danville native and the founder of the Five-Percent Nation, a movement that influenced Black culture, hip-hop and fashion.
An application on Mojo Nixon, a Danville native, musical artist and radio personality, was not approved. Denied applications can be resubmitted at future quarterly meetings. Ruben McMillan, Nixon’s son, who was involved with the application said, “If they don’t give us a yes this time, I’m going to reapply every quarter until they do.”
In addition to glamorous visitors and budding superstars, the restaurant and tourist home also saw many working professionals and students.
“Several of my teachers stayed here at times, which was hard on me,” Gilbert said, laughing.
Buses carrying students, athletic teams or band groups to and from Black colleges would stop by the restaurant, Gilbert remembers.
He recalls Black lawyers staying at his home while litigating the 1949 Martinsville Seven trial, in which seven Black men were convicted and sentenced to death by all-white juries for the alleged rape of a white woman. They received a posthumous pardon by then-Gov. Ralph Northam in 2021.
“[The lawyers] would sit around our dining room table, they made sure they had their coffee and they would discuss the case,” Gilbert said.
And though it was a haven for the Black community and had a sign saying “For Coloreds” outside, white patrons also ate at the restaurant, he said.
“They knew they could come in,” Gilbert said. “But we especially wanted Black folks to know they had a space they could go.”
Gilbert remembers growing up in Chatham during segregation, having to go to a side or rear window to order food from a restaurant, if it would serve him at all.
It was also a time before most people had telephones in their homes, he said. People would come to the Gilbert family home, which did have a phone, to make calls.
Gilbert’s father was a pastor at four local churches and worked as a builder to construct homes in the community, so he was a well-known figure in the area, Gilbert said.
“He was a brilliant man. … He was pretty much a visionary,” he said. “According to my mom, he had about a fourth-grade education, but you’d never know it. His office is full of books, and he learned so much through self-study.”
Gilbert said he can still remember many of the sermons his father preached and recalls his passion for civic responsibility.
The Voting Rights Act passed in 1965, ending voting barriers for African Americans. At the time, the legal voting age was 21, and Gilbert’s father made sure that his seven children registered to vote when they were of age.
Gilbert took over the business in 1973 with his wife, Sandra, as his father’s health declined. The couple operated it primarily as a restaurant.
Sandra Gilbert often ran the business herself while Gilbert was working other jobs. She trained many of the employees and often hears Black residents of Chatham say their first job was at Gilbert’s Restaurant, she said.
“We had fried chicken, spare ribs, mashed potatoes, potato salad, cornbread and all kinds of different desserts,” she said. “And chitlins, of course. We sold lots and lots of chitlins.”
Community groups, including the local chapter of the NAACP, also used the restaurant as a meeting space.
Decades after closing, historic value is recognized
The couple ran the restaurant until 1999, years after the death of Gilbert’s father in the 1980s. By that point, a bypass had been built that funneled travelers around Chatham, and fast-food restaurants had popped up around town, Robert Gilbert said.
Plus, segregation was over.
“Blacks didn’t have to rely on us as much then,” he said. “They had choices. Shopping malls and fast food opened up, and everybody could go everywhere. We still had good business, but not as much traffic.”
The building still stands next to the home that housed so many travelers, where Gilbert still lives today.
For a while, he considered trying to fix up the restaurant building himself, but his plans were halted by Sandra Gilbert’s breast cancer diagnosis in 2017 and the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
During the pandemic, he decided he’d tear the building down, saying it had become “an eyesore.”
Gilbert said he told a few other Chatham residents about this decision, and they encouraged him to look into the state’s designations for historic landmarks instead.
“I didn’t know it could have possible historic value,” he said. “When I was growing up, I didn’t realize I was living through this history.”
Finalizing the text for a state highway marker was the last step before erecting the marker.
Gilbert and Dixon have been working with a local nonprofit, Chatham First, to pursue funding to stabilize the deteriorating building.
Dixon said she hopes that the building’s listing on the state and national registers and the historic marker will galvanize community support for possible adaptive reuse of the structure.