When Magnolia Cafe closed during the pandemic, the Black-owned restaurant left a void. There were no more Wednesday night wings, live music or dancing after a hard day’s work. The historic house at 2405 E. Magnolia Ave. fell into disrepair and Knoxville’s Black community felt a particular loss.
In 2021, Rep. Sam McKenzie, brand new to the Tennessee House of Representatives, and Frank Shanklin, owner of Shanklin & Sons Flooring just down the street, went to the cafe’s owners with a proposal to buy and reopen it. They loved the East Knoxville icon and didn’t want to lose it.
Now, Magnolia Cafe — first opened in 1999 by Anthony Kimbro and Bobby Flemmings — is believed to be Knoxville’s oldest Black-owned restaurant still operating in the same place with the same name.
“I frequented here before I got involved in it,” Shanklin said. “It was the gathering place. This was the place where you left all your troubles outside, you came in here and had a good time. When it closed due to COVID, I don’t think people realized what the void was.”
The void is now filled in a big way. Chicken wings are back on the menu, served alongside pork chop and fish sandwiches, burgers and beloved sides twice a week. Regulars wait outside for the cafe to open and stay late into the night. The house still witnesses and creates Black history.
Black-owned restaurants hurt by urban removal legacy
It’s a tricky thing to find the oldest restaurant in Knoxville, since locations, names and owners change. It’s even more difficult to find the city’s oldest Black-owned restaurant.
Few Black businesses survived urban removal, when Knoxville leaders flattened mostly Black homes and businesses to build public projects between 1959 and 1974. Those that survived were pushed eastward and faced difficult odds as Magnolia Avenue slowly lost its status as a business corridor akin to Kingston Pike or Chapman Highway.
Though many Black-owned businesses have opened in the last decade, the pandemic dealt a fatal blow to many restaurants across the city.
Magnolia Cafe was headed for a similar fate. Its story is one of resilience and community and joy, the new owners said, and it reflects Magnolia Avenue itself, which is headed for a reinvention as a new baseball stadium spurs development.
Since they reopened the cafe in November 2021 after months of renovations, McKenzie and Shanklin have seen new customers party alongside old regulars.
“It’s a fun, festive crowd,” Shanklin said. “When they come through the doors, whatever’s going on with the world, they just leave it outside and they come in and they put their problems on hold. We always preach around here love, laughter and life.”
The house, once a photo studio and then a restaurant owned by Knoxville trailblazer Robert Kirk, the first Black professor at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, is steeped in Black history. It draws a lively crowd when the cafe opens from 4 to 10 p.m. on Wednesday and Friday nights, with a full bar and live music. It might soon start Sunday jazz brunches.
More than a restaurant to Black community
McKenzie and Shanklin worked hard to convince the cafe’s original owners to put their life’s work in other hands, but Kimbro and Flemmings were eventually convinced. They taught McKenzie and Shanklin the restaurant business, with all its intricacies and challenges, and they remain involved.
The cafe creates loyal staff and regulars because it’s more than a restaurant, said McKenzie, a Knoxville native who represents UT, downtown and East Knoxville in the state house.
On days when Magnolia Cafe isn’t open, it doubles as an event space for birthday parties, anniversaries and funeral repasts.
All along the wall of the cafe’s bar are pennants from historically Black colleges and universities. McKenzie, a graduate of Fisk University in Nashville, and Shanklin, a graduate of Knoxville College, started with Tennessee schools. Customers wanted their own alma maters on the wall and so a tradition was born.
Customers ordered pennants from their alma maters, like Florida A&M University or Howard University, and Magnolia Cafe held flag raising ceremonies during their dinner service each time one arrived, announcing over the mic that another HBCU had made the wall.
For McKenzie, who took Austin-East High School senior photos in the house when it was a photo studio and ate at Magnolia Cafe before he ran it, that sense of community is why the the restaurant needed to reopen.
“Having that sense of belonging has been really fulfilling for me,” McKenzie said. “It’s just an opportunity for us to be a small part in bringing this community back.”
Know Your Knox answers your burning questions about life in Knoxville. Want your question answered? Email knowyourknox@knoxnews.com.
Daniel Dassow is a growth and development reporter focused on technology and energy. Phone 423-637-0878. Email daniel.dassow@knoxnews.com.
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