Motivational Speaker Booted From Eatery, He Says For Being Black

PLANO, TX — Well-known motivational speaker Johnny Wimbrey and his wife were kicked out of a Plano, Texas, restaurant and entertainment spot Saturday — they say because they’re black and refused to give up their table to white guests, a claim the owner of Sambuca 360 denies.

“Race played no role” in the situation, Sambuca owner Kim Forsythe said, but said the general manager who kicked them out has been temporarily suspended for mishandling the confrontation — parts of which Wimbrey recorded on his cellphone.

Wimbrey, the author of “From the Hood to Doing Good,” didn’t identify himself to the hostess Saturday when he and his wife, Crystal, stopped for drinks and to listen to music at Sambuca 360, a restaurant where Wimbrey said he has spent tens of thousands of dollars to host events.

They found an open table, which Wimbrey said wasn’t marked with a sign to indicate it was reserved, and ordered drinks. They had been there about 20 minutes when the restaurant’s general manager asked them to move from the table because a regular customer had already reserved it. The manager offered the Wimbreys free drinks in exchange.

They refused until the manager said he was calling police. Wimbrey told Newsweek he made the recording public in hopes of turning the incident “into something positive.”

The recording starts after the general manager asked the Wimbreys to leave. Wimbrey asked why several times, and manager eventually said, “Because I don’t like you, time to go.”

“You’re asking me to leave because you don’t like me?” Wimbrey retorted

“It’s time to go,” the manager said.

Later, the manager said he was “being nice, you weren’t, so we’re going to call it a night.”

Wimbrey continued to press for an answer about what he had done wrong. Finally, the manager responded. “What you’re doing wrong is, you’re trespassing,” he said. “Time to go.”

“Just like Starbucks?” Wimbrey asked twice referencing an incident in Philadelphia last week when two black men were asked to leave a Starbucks store. The two men, who hadn’t ordered anything and said they were waiting for a friend to join them, were detained by police, but let go after the Starbucks manager declined to press charges.

“No, nothing like Starbucks,” the manager replied, repeating again, “Time to go.”

Near the end of the video, a bouncer who was escorting them out asked if the confrontation had been worth it.

“Worth what? Like Rosa Parks on the bus? Was it worth it?”

The bouncer, who is also black, told the Wimbreys that he has faced racial harassment, “but I choose to pick my battles.”

The Wimbreys watched from across the street as police arrived, four minutes after a 911 call.

In 911 tape obtained by television station WFAA, the restaurant manager had called police saying the situation involving the couple was escalating and he wasn’t sure if Johnny Wimbrey had a weapon.

“Someone calls police, and they are like you are a criminal,” Crystal Wimbrey told the television station. Her husband said the manager did “everything in his power to get police to show up in a worked up state.”

In a statement, Forsythe, the restaurant's owner, said the employee involved in the confrontation had been suspended indefinitely without pay. Forsythe told Newsweek “no racial statements” were made by restaurant employees during the confrontation.

“While I have identified some areas where I believe 360 failed to deliver quality of service,” the statement, which WFAA reported, said, “I am confident that race had absolutely nothing to do with the unfortunate situation that occurred last Saturday night.”

The Wimbreys’ attorney, Bobbie Edmonds, told WFAA that her clients didn’t get the respectful treatment everyone deserves.

"You should treat everyone with dignity nothing less and it did not happen here,” Edmonds said.

Photo via Shutterstock