The Blue Front
The Blue Front Cafe opened in 1948 under Carey and Mary Holmes. Famed for its buffalo fish, blues, and moonshine, it became a place for the local crowds of workers from the cotton fields. Carey and Mary Holmes raised their ten children and three nephews and sent most of them to college with their income from the cafe and their cotton crops.
The Holmes family navigated the web of local rules during the segregation era. They went along with regulations like not selling Coca-Cola at the cafe because the product was meant for whites while selling the same white population would buy bootleg corn liquor out the back door.
After his father died in 1970, Jimmy "Duck" Holmes assumed ownership of the Blue Front. His mother, Mary, passed in 1998.
The Holmes family navigated the web of local rules during the segregation era. They went along with regulations like not selling Coca-Cola at the cafe because the product was meant for whites while selling the same white population would buy bootleg corn liquor out the back door.
After his father died in 1970, Jimmy "Duck" Holmes assumed ownership of the Blue Front. His mother, Mary, passed in 1998.
