‘Cracker Barrel fired me for being gay’: Restaurant chain’s logo U-turn reopens wounds from its dark history

Conservatives raised a glass of sweet tea when Cracker Barrel ditched its controversial redesign and revived its folksy figurehead Uncle Herschel.

The Southern staple – famed for its rocking chairs, cornbread and country fixins – abandoned its ‘woke’ makeover last week when a social media backlash wiped nearly $100million off its market value.

But not everyone wants second helpings of the homespun chain’s checkered past which includes historic accusations of segregation, racism, and homophobia.

Cheryl Summerville was a Cracker Barrel cook in the 1990s when she was booted from her job in Georgia for being a lesbian.

‘They decided that if you were gay you weren’t welcome,’ Cheryl, 67, told the Daily Mail in an exclusive interview.

‘There was a lot of discrimination. They sold rebel hats and mammy dolls. Is this what people want to turn the clock back to?’

Cheryl was one of 11 workers fired for ‘failing to demonstrate normal heterosexual values.’

Some 34 years later, she still has a copy of the separation notice handed to her by a manager at Cracker Barrel’s Douglasville, Georgia location.

‘This employee is being terminated due to violation of company policy,’ the note bluntly asserts. ‘The employee is Gay.’

It wasn’t until 2002 that Cracker Barrel added sexual orientation to its non-discrimination policy – but its problems were far from over.

Two years later the chain settled a DOJ lawsuit alleging that bosses let white staff refuse to serve African American patrons.

That same year they paid $8.7million to settle claims that black customers were subjected to racial slurs, assigned to segregated seating and even served food taken from the trash.

The settlement brought ‘good closure to a bad period’ according to a lawyer representing 40 plaintiffs in 16 states.

When Cheryl began working there a decade earlier the US was reeling from the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and early 90s.

There had been outlandish talk of a ‘gay bowel syndrome’ and dark murmurings that HIV could be transmitted via food.

Then came an ominous, company-wide 1991 memo from Vice President of Human Resources, William Bridges.

‘Cracker Barrel is founded upon a concept of traditional American values, quality in all we do and a philosophy of … guest satisfaction,’ Bridges wrote.

‘It is … perceived to be inconsistent with those of our customer base, to continue to employ individuals in our operating units whose sexual preferences fail to demonstrate normal heterosexual values which have been the foundation of families in our society.’

Cheryl of Bremen, Georgia, grew up in the Deep South and had been openly gay for years without experiencing such obvious homophobia.

‘They began by firing three young men,’ she recalled.

‘Somebody had complained about a young gay boy at one of their stores. They said he was too effeminate.

‘I actually worked with a couple of lesbians but they didn’t have anything to say about it. 

‘I spoke up for the boys and admitted that I was not heterosexual so they said they had to fire me too.

‘My boss went to the head office in Lebanon, Tennessee, to fight for my job. They went around the store asking people if they had a problem working with me and not a single person said anything negative.

‘None of it made any difference.’

That was far from the end of the story.

For the next decade Cheryl and her partner Sandra Riley linked up with activists from Queer Nation to stage peaceful protests, sit-ins, and demonstrations across Georgia.

She was arrested three times for trespass – but on each occasion jurors found her not guilty.

‘We would go into the Cracker Barrel stores, order a coffee, then sit quietly for hours,’ mom-of-two Cheryl explained.

‘We left tips for the servers and made our presence known without causing trouble.’

The protests began with a handful of people but the numbers soon swelled and the media took up the story.

Cheryl went on the Larry King Show, was interviewed by Oprah Winfrey and in 1994 testified before Congress.

‘The right to hold a job shouldn’t be based on whether someone is black or white, male or female, gay or straight,’ she told the Senate Labor and Human Resources Subcommittee.

‘That’s what I grew up believing. Is that asking too much? I don’t think so.’

Queer Nation upped the ante by urging its members to each acquire a single share in Cracker Barrel stock, a push that became known as the Buy One Campaign.

‘None of us bought enough to do anything but we had enough to be able to go to their shareholder meetings,’ Cheryl explained.

‘We used to get checks for a penny. It was really just to be a pain in the butt.’

A 2002 shareholder resolution to add sexual orientation to the company’s equal employment policy passed with 58 percent of the vote.

‘They never apologized. Never reinstated me,’ reflected Cheryl. She was nonetheless proud of her push for progress.

It wasn’t until 2020 that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that an employer who fired someone for being gay was a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Cheryl wasn’t especially interested when Cracker Barrel unveiled – then quickly aborted – a proposed new logo last week which ditched the traditional figure of Uncle Herschel leaning against a wooden barrel.

The ensuing uproar tanked the 56-year-old company’s stock and prompted a groveling retreat as right-wing influencers and even President Donald Trump stuck the boot in.

‘We said we would listen, and we have. Our new logo is going away and our “Old Timer” will remain,’ Cracker Barrel declared.

Cheryl felt a modern, simpler decor was probably what the nationwide chain of 660 eateries needed to appeal to new customers.

But it was when she read how bosses had quietly removed a Pride section from the Cracker Barrel website and scrubbed references to an LGBTQ+ employee resource group that she started to recoil.

A spokesperson for the company dismissed the changes as ‘removing out-of-date content’ in a statement to CNN.

But Cheryl insisted: ‘They are cowards. They just do whatever they think will appease people, not because it’s the right thing to do.’

She told Daily Mail she was horrified by what she sees as a troubling back slide into darker times.

‘After so much progress we are suddenly taking a step backwards and it’s so sad to see,’ Cheryl said.

‘I think there have always been people who felt this way but I’m afraid that Trump has given them the permission they needed.

‘I’m 67 years old and I’ve never seen so much hatred.’