Satch Sanders: Basketball Player & Business Man

Part 3

But there is something else going on at Satch's. The luncheon and dinner crowd, the regulars in the bar, the flow of traffic in and out of the Sunday brunch, is almost evenly divided between blacks and whites. In a city where turf so often dictates where one feels free to travel - lest skin color cause unnecessary tension - this easy mix of races seems out of place.

It is not that Boston's other restaurants and bars overtly discourage black clientele, says Sanders, it is just that such things haven't been encouraged. Yet, even without the memories of Indiana and Kentucky, Sanders recalls being turned away from bars in Kenmore Square until he was recognized: "Hey! Good ol' number 16 in the green and white at the Garden. Sorry, Mr. Sanders, didn't recognize you. Come right in, Satch. Just a little mistake is all. Here's a nice table for you. Sit down, sit down."

Sanders would walk away in those days. If being black meant that you also had to be a ball player to have a drink or get a steak somewhere, then he'd rather not. After all, hadn't he adamantly moved into Roxbury when his efforts to rent a place in Back Bay were met with realtors who quickly hung out their No Vacancy signs?

There are, today in Boston, places where blacks and whites eat and drink together comfortably. You must search for them, though, hunt them out the way you would a vacation trinket, an oddity, a curio. There is always Bob the Chef's in the South End, the city's premier soul food emporium. And in those days past when newspapermen and others of similarly questionable repute would play until the wee hours of the morning, there was the infamous Pioneer Club, a strange and pleasant after-hours bar where blacks and whites lingered until dawn over good drinks and better fried chicken. And there are still some who say that, black or white, you can go to Estelle's and Lulu White's and not feel uncomfortable regardless of skin color.

But it is important to note that all of those places are in predominantly black neighborhoods. Check the restaurants in white areas, in places like the Faneuil Hall Marketplace, and the clientele is noticeably absent of blacks. So Satch's is an oddity, even though Sanders likes to think of it as a mainstream restaurant, a big place that advertises for everything from the after-theater crowd to the Sunday brunch lovers. That those groups are racially mixed makes it different. Put Satch's in many other cities - New York, Detroit, Atlanta, for example - and it wouldn't even be a curiosity. Put it in Boston, and it is talked about as if some great social experiment.