Legendary fried chicken
In the 1940s and ’50s a black-owned and operated barbecue restaurant was nestled in the pines a mile north of the NorthTown Mall before there was a NorthTown Mall.
The restaurant was a frame structure with tables set up in the various rooms.
The name of the place was Virgil’s, although at times it was also referred to as Virgil’s Chicken Shack, Virgil’s Restaurant, Virgil’s Inn and Virgil’s Club.
Virgil’s did not practice racial discrimination like a lot of the other Spokane restaurants during the 1940s and ’50s. “No Colored Patronage Solicited” was a common posting around Spokane in those days but all colors were admitted to eat at Virgil’s.
Jerrelene Williamson, president of the Spokane Northwest Black Pioneers, remembers “Lots of white folk came from all over town to eat the famous chicken served at Virgil’s.”
My aunt, Dolly Krogh, a white lifelong Spokane resident, remembers another advantage that Virgil’s offered besides finger-lickin’ chicken: Virgil’s also provided music for dancing from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. (except on Sunday). The laws back in the 1940s and ’50s required bars and taverns to close at midnight and all day Sunday.
My own white parents and many of our white neighbors danced and dined on the highly regarded fried chicken at Virgil’s.
Great personal strength is required to quit drinking beer at midnight, then go eat fried chicken and dance until 2 a.m.
My senior-citizen uncle, Oot Krogh, remembered that Virgil’s did not have a liquor license, so an under-the-radar BYOB policy was in effect at those late-night dancing sessions
Virgil Sexton and his wife, Pearl, opened up the Chicken Shack in the early 1940s. Virgil died a few years later.
Pearl ran the chicken restaurant for a few years and then married David Anderson. Together they continued to fry up the best chicken in town. Pearl and her husbands lived at 6203 N. Wiscomb, next door to Virgil’s.
Virgil’s had a knotty-pine interior that was so popular in the day, and there were tables outside in the summer season, which allowed for events attended by lots of people.
Blacks in Spokane often felt unwelcome in many restaurants, so Virgil’s became the gathering place for events like a 1946 Memorial Day Dance that was advertised in the the Spokane Star, a weekly newspaper directed at the Spokane-area black community.
Wally Hagin and other black musicians kept up the dance music six nights a week.
Unfortunately, Spokanites also faced inflation and steeply rising costs back in the old days. During the 1940s a complete chicken dinner at Virgil’s cost less than a dollar. By 1956 the price of that complete chicken dinner had skyrocketed to $1.25. Maybe the chicken pluckers had unionized?
Whatever the cause, it was only a few years later that Virgil’s closed its doors and that great fried chicken is now only a distant memory to a lot of gray-haired senior citizens.