A piece of local and Black history now has a historic marker.
When Robert Gregory Gilbert – a Black pastor and entrepreneur in Pittsylvania County – built a fuel station, general store, and cafe at 401 N. Main Street in Chatham, which opened roughly around 1945, segregation, “separate but equal” ideologies, and other Jim Crow laws still had a death grip on the South. However, the locally famous establishment became a hub for breaking down racial barriers, and challenging racial ideologies and legislation, providing services to everyone, regardless of color.
The business really started in 1939.
Prior to opening the better-known location, which the family secured by selling their family farm to centralize their operations as things expanded, Gilbert and his wife, Arzelia Craft Gilbert, opened and operated Gilbert’s Café & Grocery Store in a rented space at 364 North Main Street, which is now the Judah Lodge, a local Masonic chapter.
The business offered general provisions, food, farming supplies, and a small clothing line; the Gilberts served both Black and white customers.
While most other businesses in the area had separate entrances and exits, and segregated bathrooms and water fountains, Gilbert’s had one entrance and exit everyone used equally. Though an original sign – now gone – read, “Gilbert’s for Colored,” the business catered to all people, regardless of color. It mainly served to let Black people know the establishment was safe and friendly for them, in a time when many places weren’t.
“The business became a quiet but radical space that planted the seed for change,” the historic marker application packet said.
Robert “Bob” Gilbert, Jr., recalled what it was like to work in his parent’s establishment as a young man, stocking shelves, and serving customers after school. The building had seven rooms available upstairs for guests to stay. Decades later, an addition was built onto the structure, and in 1983, the restaurant underwent a remodel. Orange-upholstered barstools and booths remain in the dining space, harkening back to its heyday.
Gilbert (Senior) was practically born with the Jim Crow laws when he came into the world on Oct. 16, 1895, in Pittsylvania County. To say this system made it hard for Black individuals to get ahead is a gross understatement. Still, Gilbert succeeded in his business efforts. Before the bypass skirted traffic around Chatham’s downtown, motorists traveling north and south passed through the town, and subsequently past Gilbert’s Restaurant. The establishment was a thriving hub.
“[Black] people traveling from Washington, for example, to the Carolinas, we were told so many times this was the only place they could stop or go inside of. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know for sure, but we were told that many times, that that was the only place,” Bob Gilbert said. “When they saw the ‘for Colored’ sign, that was like a big relief, and so word of mouth, we’d get the same traffic going and coming.”
Aside from offering an all-purpose shopping place at the outset, Gilbert’s Restaurant was famous for its food.
“We had some good cooks there. We had one or two that worked for my dad and mom that stayed on until their health failed,” Bob Gilbert said.
Over its years as a thriving restaurant and hotel, Gilbert’s Restaurant hosted a slew of famous Black guests, particularly entertainers. Notable visitors included a young James Earl Jones – whose voice would become famous for George Lucas’ Darth Vader in Star Wars, and Mufasa in Disney’s The Lion King – the Singing Siamese Twins, Yvonne and Yvette McCarther, and singer/songwriter Fats Domino.
Bob Gilbert said his sister personally waited on James Earl Jones during his stay.
Gilbert’s Restaurant also became a hub for civil rights activism, and a place where Black women and men in particular could gain financial independence through employment. Multiple lawyers who worked on Civil Rights cases lodged there while working in nearby cities, Bob Gilbert said, including lawyers on the “Martinsville Seven” case. Members of groups like the NAACP and Voters League also met there.
“Gilbert’s was not only a place of racial integration, Black economic freedom, and a sustainable economic hub for local food. It was also, importantly, a place of joy,” the application packet said.
Gilbert’s Restaurant was never formally listed in the “Green Book” – a compilation of Black-friendly fuel stations, restaurants, lodgings, and other businesses and amenities throughout the South to help people of color travel more safely – but it fit the criteria.
Gilbert passed ownership of the establishment to his son, Bob, and his wife, Sandra, in the early 1970s.
Sandra Gilbert, Bob Gilbert’s wife, became renowned for her pastries and desserts, especially lemon chess pie. She also specialized in drinks like lemonade and tea, as well as chitterlings.
“When I came and I got into it, I enjoyed people, so I’m a people person, so it’s easy. I think they enjoyed coming, because it was more like a family atmosphere,” Sandra Gilbert said. Growing up, she was surrounded by women in her family who cooked avidly; she was drawn more to desserts.
The couple had two sons together, and they also worked and played in the restaurant, as well as many of their nieces.
The Gilberts maintained operations at the family restaurant until a combination of factors – largely economic – forced them to make the difficult decision to close in 1999. The once vibrant building has been sitting vacant, used only for storage for many years. After applying, and getting approved, for a historic marker, the Gilberts are hoping to continue preserving a Chatham landmark.
It was local residents who encouraged the Gilberts to seek a historic marker, and preserve the former restaurant, thanks to a conversation Bob Gilbert had with a local at a hardware store just prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. The local historical society, Chatham First, and other organizations got involved. Thanks to combined efforts, the iconic structure has a better chance of being saved.
“We were contemplating maybe making it a flea market, some type of that structure,” Bob Gilbert said. “After my wife came down with her illness, I decided I was going to maybe have it taken down. And this was when I was talking to the person over at the hardware store, and they were telling me about their interest, and they said, ‘Don’t tear it down. We have this interest to make it a historical marker.’”
In the past five years, 67% of all new historic markers have focused on African American subjects, according to data from the Virginia Department of Historic Resources. There are a total of 484, so far, of markers focusing on Black history, comprising about 18% of the total system – excluding county line markers, which are not topical in nature, the department data showed.
The Gilberts hope a historic marker might help make some grant funding available to support restoration of the building. The vision, Bob Gilbert said, is to eventually open the space to community groups, particularly groups that provide services to the public.
“We want to make it accessible to some community use,” Bob Gilbert said. “That’s another objective we’ve got to get to and define – we haven’t done that yet, exactly, but we know generally what we want to do with that. Hopefully it will be a local group or nonprofit or something of that nature who will maybe be interested in having a home base there or something, so it can be open, and hopefully have some relics of historical value of what is going on… during an era that Blacks had no places to, no choices… to commemorate the ones who did come. Not only them, but our locals. We have so much appreciation for our local customers, the ones who kept us in business.”