Born in 1897, Carson Gulley grew up near Camden, Arkansas.
His parents were sharecroppers and his father
was a former slave.
At the age of six, he began to work picking cotton, and what
little schooling he received happened around the needs of
the cotton fields.
At 16, in an effort to enrich his education, his father
apprenticed him to a teacher in a nearby community.
Gulley graduated from high school in two years and
returned to teach in his local school, developing the skills
of an educator.
He also continued sharecropping while teaching.
At 20, he married Maybelle Lenor and they would have four
children together.
However, the marriage did not last and they would separate
in the 1920s.
Gulley became discouraged with sharecropping and low wages of
teaching and ventured out to try and find a new trade.
He traveled widely and worked in different cities as a chef,
continually improving his culinary skills.
In the summer of 1926, he was cooking at the Essex Lodge in
Tomahawk, Wisconsin and he met the Director of University
Housing, Don Halverson.
Halverson was impressed with Carson and offered him a job
at UW-Madison, where Gulley started in December of 1926 at
the age of 29.
As he was establishing himself in his work at the University,
he also found the love of his life.
On July 26th, 1930, Gulley married Beatrice Russey.
In the early part of the 20th Century, African Americans in
Wisconsin found segregation and discrimination similar to
that existing in the southern states.
The Gulleys experienced this in Madison, especially around
obtaining housing.
Several times, white neighbors in buildings where the Gulleys
rented circulated petitions to evict them, stating they did
not want African Americans in their building.
This discrimination continued and in 1935 Gulley decided to
give up his job at the UW and take one that had been offered
to him in another city.
To resolve the Gulley's housing problems and as an
inducement to stay at the University, Halverson got
permission to build the Gulleys an apartment in the
basement of Tripp Residence Hall.
In the summer of 1936, Gulley was invited by the President
of the Tuskegee Institute to develop a 10-week commercial
chef-training course.
He would lead this program, spending time immersed in life
at one of the most important centers of African American
identity in the United States.
As part of his teaching at Tuskegee, Gulley worked with
and was influenced by Dr. George Washington Carver, who
told him: "Chef Gulley, you are an artist, and you are
dealing with the finest of all arts.
You give so much time to the little things that most cooks
overlook."
Replicating his Tuskegee teaching experience, Gulley
developed a successful Cooks and Bakers School for the U.S.
Navy at the UW from 1942 - 1944.
From 1944 - 1951,
he helped develop a professional cook's training
school at the UW.
Gulley was one of the early African American
instructors on campus.
In 1949, Gulley published his first cookbook,
Seasoning Secrets,
something first suggested to him at Tuskegee by Dr. George
Washington Carver.
Already a well-known personality in Madison, the
cookbook added to his celebrity, creating more
opportunities for him to address various groups around
the state, oftentimes speaking in towns that had no African
American residents.
His celebrity continued to grow and he had radio programs
on local Madison stations and in 1953, Carson and Beatrice
were invited to star in a local cooking program on WMTV
television called What's Cookin'.
Gulley was one of the early African Americans with his own
TV show in the United States, and it is the only known
program to feature an African American husband and wife team
on television during the 1950s.
Gulley retired from the University in 1954 after 27
years of service after continually being passed over
for Director of Dormitory Food Services and other promotions
that went to younger, less qualified white candidates.
After retiring, he focused on his catering, TV, radio and
speaking ventures.
In 1954, the Gulleys purchased land to build a home in the
new Crestwood subdivision.
Once again, they were faced with white neighbors
circulating a petition to prevent them from moving in.
A special meeting of the cooperative was held in
September to vote on this issue.
In an intense and divisive meeting, the housing co-op
voted 64 to 30 against the proposal and invited the
Gulleys to join the Crestwood community.
While this was an early and public individual victory for
open housing in Madison, more systemic change in Madison
housing laws would not happen for another decade.
In 1961, the Gulleys decided to expand their catering
business to a full-fledged restaurant.
They built a new building that would be their home and
business which opened on September 15th, 1962.
Two weeks later, Gulley became ill and entered the hospital.
He never recovered and passed away on November 2nd, 1962.
On February 20th, 1966 the building where Gulley spent
his University career was re-dedicated as
Carson Gulley Commons.
This was the first university building named after a civil
service employee and the first named
after an African American.
Carson Gulley spent his life not just nourishing people's
bodies through his cooking, but nourishing their minds
through his teaching.
Gulley was a civil rights pioneer in the state of
Wisconsin, breaking racial barriers in teaching, radio,
television, and housing, and doing it all prior to what we
think of as the start of the modern civil rights movement.