Atlanta’s James Paschal died. Atlanta’s James Vaughn Paschal, whose restaurant served the fried chicken that nourished the lieutenants of the Civil Rights Movement, died Friday from complications of heart surgery at Piedmont Hospital, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Tuesday. He was 88. The funeral will be 11 a.m. Friday at the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel at Morehouse College. Murray Brothers Funeral Home is handling arrangements. The Rev. Joseph Lowery, who will be delivering the eulogy at Paschal’s funeral, told the newspaper that his friend was an indispensable figure within the civil rights struggle. “It [Paschal's Restaurant] was sort of the official headquarters of the movement,” Lowery said told the Constitution-Journal from his Atlanta home. “We would’ve been severely handicapped without Paschal’s.”  The brothers Paschal – James and Robert, who died in 1997 – opened a diner in Atlanta decades ago on Hunter Street (now Martin Luther King Jr. Drive). In 1959, the diner moved across the street, expanded and became Paschal’s Restaurant, a hub of the movement. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and his lieutenants planned the Selma-to-Montgomery march and the Poor People’s Campaign at Paschal’s, according to the newspaper. In 1972, Andrew Young, on his way to becoming the first Black congressman from Georgia since Reconstruction, announced his decision to run from the restaurant. When the parents of jailed student protesters needed a place to wait, pray and eat, they went to Paschal’s Restaurant or the motel the brothers opened in 1967. Today, four of Paschal’s  establishments – including three at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport – operate in metro Atlanta.Black cafeteria workers at Comcast Center sue. Black cafeteria workers at Philly’s newest skyscraper claim in a $200 million lawsuit that they have experienced racist remarks, job discrimination and retaliatory firings, reports CNN. Eleven plaintiffs filed the federal suit Monday against the Compass Group, a company that handles food services at the new Comcast Center, and two Compass employees. They charge that they were called racist names by supervisors and given lower-tier jobs than White workers with the same qualifications. Seven of the 11 plaintiffs were fired as part of a purge of Black food-service employees, their lawyers said. “There’s been a shift from a predominantly African-American base of employees to now, a predominantly White base, which we believe is a result of discrimination,” lawyer Douglas Wigdor told CNN. The London-based Compass Group, which is the world’s largest catering company, said it had not seen the suit and could not comment on the allegations. However, it denied there was a pattern of discrimination. “Compass Group has clear and strong policies that embrace diversity, inclusion and respect in the workplace, and prohibit any sort of behavior that is contrary to these values,” the company said in a statement from its U.S. headquarters in Charlotte, N.C. The suit also names two related companies, Compass Group North America and Flik International Corp. The workers are seeking at least $100 million in compensation and pain-and-suffering and another $100 million or more in punitive damages. While the workers who filed the suit worked only at Comcast, the suit seeks to add Black workers at other Compass Group sites, thus forming a class action.

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