San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Dorothy King: Oakland restaurant owner a leader in Black community.
Dorothy King, the owner of two beloved Everett & Jones Barbeque restaurants in Oakland and a leader in the Black community, has died. She was 69.
King’s mother, Dorothy Everett, founded the Everett & Jones empire in 1973 that eventually grew to several Bay Area locations. But it was King who opened the flagship restaurant in Jack London Square in 1999 — and it was known for much more than its tender brisket, smoky pork ribs and sweetpeppery sauce. Under her leadership, it became a vital community hub: a place for live blues, political events and fundraisers, where King also fed the homeless every day.
She was a survivor of breast cancer and a stroke, but her health started deteriorating in recent years. Her daughters will continue to run the restaurants.
“She touched so many people,” said her daughter Dorcia White. “It’s hard for African American businesses to go past one generation and then two generations, and now we’re the third generation.” Born in Alabama, King moved to West Oakland as a baby during the Great Migration.
Before she set her focus on restaurants, she was a fierce advocate for the disenfranchised. She was inspired by her own experiences with homelessness, as well as the visible suffering of single mothers in Oakland.
In 1989, she worked with the Oakland Union of the Homeless and Dignity Housing West to convert vacant properties into housing for the homeless. When government officials weren’t responsive, she and other activists kicked in the door of a vacant house and stayed there until Housing and Urban Development agreed to give the building to the homeless for $1. One one occasion, she was arrested for trespassing, but the experience left her unfazed.
At Everett & Jones, she continued her advocacy work by hiring the formerly incarcerated, the formerly homeless and others who found difficulty gaining employment. She turned the Jack London Square restaurant into a blues venue at night to help local musicians, and the restaurant’s reputation as a community fixture led to celebrities and politicians regularly dropping in. Former President Bill Clinton, future Vice President Kamala Harris and Warriors star Steph Curry and his entrepreneur wife, Ayesha Curry, are a few of the big names who have dined at the restaurant.
“We had debate watch parties; City Council candidates wanted to get her endorsement,” White said. “If you wanted to be elected, you came through.”
King never stopped fighting for others. In the past several years, she began feeding more than 100 people experiencing homelessness every day after the Jack London Square restaurant had closed for the night.
“Dorothy was an icon in our community and in the African American community especially,” said Derreck Johnson, a friend who owned neighboring restaurant Home of Chicken and Waffles. “The legacy she’s going to leave is one of hope, one of aspiration and one to show anything is possible.”
At the restaurant, she was warm and welcoming to all — even perceived rivals. Patrick Davis of KC’s BBQ, another longrunning barbecue restaurant in Berkeley, said customers always tried to pit the two barbecue families against each other. But he loved going to Everett & Jones to listen to live music. On one visit, King introduced him to her daughter as a customer shouted, “You guys should have a barbecue competition!”
“She grabbed our hands and said, ‘You’re only supposed to support and uplift each other. I don’t want to hear you guys in competition,’ ” Davis recalled. “She was really a great lady, open to helping anybody.”
White described her mother as the ultimate truthteller, someone who always spoke her mind no matter what. People respected her, knowing they weren’t going to hear anything fake from King.
“She was the perfect spokesperson for her business, for her candidates, for social justice,” White said. “She had a knack for being able to command a room.”
The Oakland restaurants (at 126 Broadway and 4245 Macarthur Blvd.) remain open, as does a Berkeley location (1955 San Pablo Ave.).
A memorial service is being planned for this month. King is survived by her husband, John Jernegan; sisters, Annie Jones, Hellen Bellamy, Mary Everett and Shirley Everett Dicko; brother, George Allen Everett; four daughters; two sons; nine grandchildren; and many other family members, friends, customers and her Yorkshire terrier, Saucey.