The Junaluska Story

The Chocolate Bar

During segregation, the Chocolate Bar was a cafe established near downtown Boone some time in the 1940s by Junaluska residents. It was a social hub for the community. The business was run by David Clayborn Sr., who also managed the Boone Mountain Lions baseball team, and was located on North Depot Street near what is now the Watauga County Public Library.¹ Despite the name, the Chocolate Bar was not a bar, but a cafe visited by people of all ages, as the sale of alcohol was illegal in Boone from 1949 to 1986.² Residents of Junaluska still found ways to have fun, and the Chocolate Bar was important in social life. David Horton, a resident who was a young adult during theChocolate Bar’s prime, recalled, “We used to have dancing parties and things there.”³

Eventually, the Chocolate Bar went out of business. In 1987, the building that housed the Chocolate Bar was purchased by the Austin & Barnes Funeral Home.⁴ In the spring of 2023, Dr. Chip Thomas and Travis Donovan put up a mural to commemorate the Chocolate Bar on a vacant building on Church Street. The mural is of the most iconic photo of the Chocolate Bar, in which Junaluska community members are pictured sitting around a table and smiling for the camera. Chip Thomas is a well known physician and social activist, who invests in street art.⁵

In 2021, an excavation team from Appalachian State University partnered with the Junaluska Community Archaeology Project to help document material artifacts from the Chocolate Bar’s heyday. This project involved digging around the Chocolate Bar building, uncovering “a 1940s nail polish bottle and a mini Irresistible perfume bottle from the 1930s.”⁶ While the original Chocolate bar is gone, its memory lives on through art and the people who continue to share its story.

A Group Gathered at The Chocolate Bar

“The Chocolate Bar,” Junaluska Heritage Association, 2011, junaluskaboone.org

Mural Celebrating The Chocolate Bar near downtown Boone

Moss Brennan, Chocolate Bar Mural, 2021, photograph, Mountain Times, https://www.wataugademocrat.com/mountaintimes/junaluska-historic-photo-commemorated-in-public-art-mural/article_5244eb4c-e37c-11ed-ae59-abbfe80b5883.html

Bibliography

“Chocolate Bar and the Junaluska Community.” PocketSites. https://pocketsights.com/tours/place/Chocolate-Bar-and-the-Junaluska-Community-27975:3449

Keefe, Susan, ed. Junaluska: Oral Histories of a Black Appalachian Community. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Inc. 2020.

Miller, Brian. “App State archaeology project partners with Junaluska to document Black history in Boone.” Appalachian Today. December 2022. https://today.appstate.edu/2022/12/13/junaluska

Mobley, Jillyan. “Junaluska historic photo commemorated in public-art mural.” Mountain Times. May 2023. https://www.wataugademocrat.com/mountaintimes/junaluska-historic-photo-commemorated-in-public-art-mural/article_5244eb4c-e37c-11ed-ae59-abbfe80b5883.html