Wisconsin Biographies

[bright string music] - Narrator: Lights, camera, action!

The year is 1953 and Carson and Beatrice Gulley are starting to film their new TV show, What's Cookin'.

Carson was already a notable chef and educator.

Now, he and his wife were about to become some of the country's very first Black TV stars.

This was a long way from Carson's beginnings.

How did he go from a farm in rural Arkansas to the bright lights of a TV studio?

Carson Gulley was born in Nevada County, Arkansas in 1897.

His parents were cotton sharecroppers.

They farmed land owned by someone else and had to hand over a portion of their crops.

But Carson's father wanted more for his son.

He sent him to apprentice with a local teacher, and soon, Carson became a teacher himself.

For three years, Carson taught in his town's one-room schoolhouse.

But he wasn't content to stay in a small Arkansas town.

Like over 1.6 million Black Americans in the early 1900s, he decided to leave the South for life somewhere in a northern or Midwestern city.

He soon found his calling while working in a restaurant.

He would become a chef.

This wasn't an easy goal.

He had to travel the country to find people who would let him cook in their kitchens and train him.

In the summer of 1926, Carson was working at the Essex Lodge in Tomahawk, Wisconsin.

One rainy evening, a traveler named Don Halverson stopped in for the night.

Despite the late hour, Carson opened the kitchen to cook him dinner.

The food was so good that Don asked to meet the chef.

The two men quickly became friends.

Before he left the lodge, Don offered Carson a job at UW-Madison.

By December, Carson Gulley was cooking for thousands at the university.

Over the next 27 years, he would serve over 16 million meals.

A few years after starting at UW-Madison, Carson met and married the woman who became his cooking and business partner, Beatrice.

The young couple wanted to buy a house in Madison, but quickly faced racial discrimination.

Nobody in the areas they liked would sell a home to a Black couple.

By 1935, Don Halverson had to convince the university to build them an apartment on campus.

Despite this, Carson continued to excel, not just as a chef but as an educator as well.

In 1936, he was invited to teach at the prestigious Tuskegee Institute.

In the 1940s, he directed a cooks and bakers school at UW-Madison for the U.S.

Navy, becoming one of the university's first Black instructors.

Soon, he was writing cookbooks and doing radio broadcasts to reach even more people.

All this led to the Gulleys' biggest role yet, starting in 1953: their own cooking show.

What's Cookin'?

was one of the first TV shows to be hosted by a Black couple.

It ran for nearly 10 years and made the hosts into early celebrity chefs.

Even with their many successes, Carson and Beatrice still faced racism and housing discrimination.

The year after they started their TV show, the Gulleys bought land in the Crestwood area of Madison.

But some of the local residents wanted to block them from moving in.

By September of 1954, the neighborhood association put the issue up to a vote.

Would they let Carson and Beatrice join their community?

When the votes were counted, the final tally was 64 to 30 to let the Gulleys stay.

[group cheers] After almost 20 years of trying, Carson and Beatrice could finally move out of university housing and build their own home in Madison.

Today, Carson Gulley is remembered as an innovative chef, an enthusiastic teacher, and an early champion of housing rights.

From a schoolhouse to a TV show, his story shows the value of lifelong learning and never backing down from your dreams.

– Carson Gulley: I do not believe in garnishing food.

I don't think there's anything on earth looks any better than a perfect dish of well-cooked food.

Of course, a green contrast like parsley does make a beautiful appearance.

If you like it, okay.

But for me, I'd rather have the plain food.