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Nat Fuller was an enslaved chef and business owner who was instrumental in bringing together the city of Charleston, S.C. at the conclusion of the Civil War. In April 1865, Chef Fuller hosted a lavish feast that was racially integrated in a bid to bring together the city.

Fuller was born in 1812 to a planter father and an enslaved mother. At the age of 15, Fuller was sold to a local businessman as a cook and butler. He became an apprentice of a London-trained bake and learned the fine culinary arts. It was this tutelage and expert training that would eventually make Fuller a household name.

After gaining his freedom in 1852, Fuller became a seller of wild game and meats. His business thrived as he was the main contact for not just fine dining but meat and food supplies. In 1860, Fuller opened the Bachelor’s Retreat as a de facto gentlemen’s club but then shifted his focus to cooking and catering.

When the Civil War ended in 1865, tensions between the North and South began to thaw but Charleston was still largely divided. Details of Fuller’s feast are scattered, but what historians agree on is that it featured both Black and white citizens of note from Charleston.

Additional accounts suggest that the guests sang, drank, danced and praised President Abraham Lincoln as they slowly embraced being a part of the North’s Union states. The dinner has been reenacted in recent times with a similar theme of togetherness.

One of the victims of the tragic Charleston church shooting last year at Emanuel A.M.E., late State Senator Clementa Pinckney, attended one of the recent modern-day feasts.

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