Remembering Martin Luther King

On Trump's inauguration day

January 2025

Last Monday Donald Trump was inaugurated president. Every four years a president is inaugurated here – and it’s always done on January 20.

In a coincidence rich with irony, the presidential inauguration this year happened to clash with Martin Luther King Day. MLK Day is a public holiday that’s always celebrated on the third Monday of January.

To get some sense of how pivotal a figure King is in the history of Washington DC, the place to visit is not a museum or a library – it’s a 65-year-old hot dog, burger and chili joint.

Ben Ali and his wife Virginia opened Ben’s Chili Bowl in 1958. At the time, U Street was a centre for nightlife and music. Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, Cab Calloway and Sarah Vaughn performed at U Street venues like the Lincoln and Howard Theatres. At the time, the street was known as Black Broadway.

Ben’s Chili Bowl soon became famous for its half-smokes with chili. A half-smoke is a breakfast sausage that’s half beef, half pork. Ben’s half-smokes were – and still are – big, juicy and meaty.

At Ben’s, the half-smokes were – and are – served in big fluffy steamed buns. Mustard and fried onions are added. The dogs are so big it’s a challenge to get your mouth around them. Imagine the challenge once the dogs have been ladled with hot, rich chili.

In the early 1960s, a certain young man used to drop in at Ben’s for lunch.

That man was Martin Luther King.

Virginia, now 90, recalls: “He had a little satellite office around the corner. He would come by the chili bowl and sit there and have his chili cheeseburger and I’d get to talk to him.

“And I remember he told me one story that he and young John Lewis at the time and A. Philip Randolph and a few other people met with President Kennedy and he said President Kennedy said: ‘Dr King, we’re going to do all we can to help you. But, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to bring a large number of people here … because if there’s an incident it will disrupt your movement.’

“Dr King said: ‘There won’t be an incident’.

“And you know what happened? He brought 250 000 people here, without a single incident.”

Virginia and a quarter of a million others attended the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in August, 1963.

“I knew how special it was when I went to that march on Washington, which is 60 years ago, to see a sea of people, all colours, all descriptions, all ages, there to help us protest the injustices of African Americans.”

Ben’s was a gathering place for civil rights leaders and activists before and after the March on Washington.

But less than five years after the march, on 4 April, 1968, King was shot dead while standing on a second-floor balcony at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.

In an interview on the 2018 Netflix TV show Stay Here, Virginia said that people ran into Ben’s weeping when they heard the news.

Stokely Carmichael was the head of the Black Panther Party at the time.

The night after the assassination of King, Carmichael led a group through the streets of the capital, demanding that businesses close, out of respect. He tried to prevent violence, but the situation escalated beyond his control.

For Virginia, this was a frightening time.

“After the uprising, after Dr King was assassinated, it was a really difficult time … I’d been in this beautiful, classy, proud community and then the community’s literally destroyed.

“That was scary. It was really scary. Because you were hearing bricks going through windows, and Molotov cocktails, and you’re seeing fires.

Ben wrote "Soul Brother" in soap on the front window in an attempt to stop the mobs.

Instead of encouraging Ben and Virginia to shutter their business, Carmichael asked the couple to keep the chili bowl open.

Carmichael asked the Alis to serve food to everyone on the streets: firefighters, business owners, residents, activists and police.

Ali described the three nights after King's assassination as "the hardest nights ever"

But she was grateful for the support she received from the people who sought comfort at her restaurant – and the people were grateful to the restaurant for providing a place of safety.

“Nobody touched Ben’s. We’d been there 10 years by that time. We had been readily accepted by that wonderful community. We managed to pull though.”

On January 10, 2009, Virginia was part of history again. Barack Obama, America’s first Black president, paid a surprise visit to Ben’s.

“It was an absolutely amazing experience. I think I’ve lived in the best of times,” Virginia says.

“It was maybe ten days before the inauguration. He’d just moved to town and the very first place he went to have something to eat was at Ben’s Chili Bowl, on a Saturday, when we’re always busy … At my age I didn’t expect to see that. Ever. So it was just a thrilling experience.

I don’t normally get the hot dog, but when you visit Washington DC, that’s what you do. You go to Ben’s Chili Bowl. You stand at the famous counter and you order a chili half smoke with fries and a soda. While you wait, you take in the photos of America’s most famous African American leaders – from Rosa Parks to Malcolm X to Jesse Jackson. And when you pop the skin of your sausage, you see, smell and taste the history of this place.

Last Monday, when Inauguration Day overlapped with MLK Day, Virginia will have remembered Dr King:

“Well, you just felt like he was fearless. To be brave enough to do the things that he did, and to believe in it as deeply as he did.

“He was just an amazing human being and we so thank God that we had him in our lives.

He made a big difference in this entire country, in the world actually. And he gave us the big start, he really did. He was responsible, not single-handedly of course, but he was certainly responsible for the civil rights movement and the voting rights movement.

“Now we need more change. We need something to happen now to bring us together.

“We still have a ways to go.”