Black Lives Matter Protest Sparks Name Change for Sambo’s
Santa Barbara Restaurant Has Long Faced Criticism over Racially Charged Name
Before altering its sign bubbles, Sambo's Facebook page showed a rendering of how it might look, with the message: "We are changing the name of our restaurant, what the future name will be is still uncertain, however it will not be Sambo’s." | Credit: Courtesy Sambo's
It only took thousands of protesters for the last standing Sambo’s in the country to change its name.
The Santa Barbara restaurant, which opened in 1957, was the first of the more than 1,000 Sambo’s restaurants that later opened up across the county at the height of America’s pancake house obsession.
Protests over the name, which is a slur toward black people, began in the 1970s and forced locations to close or rename through the ’80s. The Santa Barbara location kept the name to honor the founders, Sam Battistone Sr. and Newell Bohnett, who named the restaurant based on a combination of the first three letters of one name and two from the other.
