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Frederick Soop: Not An Equal Opportunity Restraunteer





Detroit Free Press, March 28, 1890






If you don't want to hear a racist tale of a suburban namesake then close your eyes now. 






As early
as 1876 Frederick Soop had left his Belleville farm once again, having
done a stint at the Hawkins House in Ypsilanti during the Civil War and
the City Hotel in Detroit thereafter, and ventured off to Chatham,
Ontario to run the Rutley Hotel, which was conducted as a Temperance House. 









Detroit Free Press, August 17, 1879









In 1879 he was searching for a good restaurant or small hotel to operate. Eventually he ended up on Washington Avenue near State Street running a dining hall which he ran until around 1890.









Detroit Free Press, April 16, 1890







It was in 1888 when the aforementioned racial incident occurred at his dining establishment. It was then that William H. Haynes, a black doctor, sat down with his former classmate S. W. Barkwell for dinner. The men ordered but when the food was served none was placed before Mr. Haynes who, ironically, had ordered soup. Barkwell protested the slight of his friend and it was then that Soop emerged and informed the men that he would not serve a colored person.









Haynes brought a suit against Soop for $5,000. In the first trial he lost. In the second, after hearing testimony which included some outrageous banter against Haynes's black attorney, Judge Brevoort ruled that Haynes was not a U.S. citizen and Soop's restaurant wasn't a public inn and thus wasn't entitled to sue.









Detroit Free Press, April 17, 1890







The banter between Soop's attorney and Haynes' was probably the low light of the second trial. Sylvester Larned's co-attorney, a colored man named D. Augustus Straker opened his remarks to the jury by stating that Haynes had called for soup. To which the defense attorney E. G. Stevenson interrupted, "What! Did he wish to eat the defendant here?"









Straker responded sternly, "I am not joking Mr. Stevenson. If I do not state this case intelligently remember that you white men have 1,000 years the advantage of such as I, and you should be charitable towards us."









Stevenson responded with an apology and stated that he did not see his opponent as inferior to himself.









Straker made jest of his slight by stating, "I lived thirteen years in the South at any rate." He obviously wasn't a shrinking violet.








Detroit Free Press, January 14, 1911


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