Lannie's Bar-B-Q Spot in Selma is said to serve the finest ribs this side of the Alabama River and it is a pleasure to discover finally what the phrase "finger lickin' good" really means.
Lannie's occupies a strange place in the history of the civil rights movement as it was the favoured eating place both of the marchers who descended on this small Alabama town in 1965 as part of the long battle for voting rights for all and of the local police force who, with the state troopers and the National Guard, also found themselves needing to refuel during the long stand-offs.
But over the last few days in Lannie's the talk has been of another historic occasion, the election of the city's first ever black mayor, Mr James Perkins Jnr.
Now the city where black and white marchers were clubbed and tear-gassed by sneering state troopers has both a black mayor and a black chief of police. Mr Joe Smitherman, the man who was mayor all those years ago and had remained in office ever since, has gone.
Perkins's slogan was "one more river to cross", which could hardly have been more apposite. It was on the Pettus Bridge over the muddy Alabama River that the marchers faced down the state troopers in 1965.
What strikes the visitor to the city is what a large part the church still plays in politics in the south. It was, of course, a Reverend - Dr Martin Luther King - who led the final march from Selma to Montgomery after the first bloody clashes. And it was another Reverend, Fred Shuttlesworth, one of the unsung heroes of those days, who addressed the congregation on the night before the current election in the same Tabernacle Baptist church where the marchers had rallied 35 years earlier.
The nearby Brown chapel acted as a command post for the marchers and the man who was fatally beaten by a group of white racists near the Silver Moon Cafe in Selma was James Reeb, a Unitarian minister from Boston. (The Silver Moon, a white haunt in the old days, is no more.)
God was asked repeatedly for his blessing on the Perkins campaign and must have had to work overtime to deal with all the prayers for a final victory. Smitherman for his part was described by one of his (black) supporters whom I met as a "Godfearing man" as though there could be no higher praise. The victory was greeted by Perkins's supporters with cries of "Glory, Hallelujah!"
The other aspect that strikes a visitor is that despite all the blood shed to fight segregation, how much still remains. "They go to their bars, we go to ours," Sam Walker, a local (black) activist said. "The only public school is now 95 per cent black. Integration was never achieved. Segregation is still there."
Joanne Bland, who works at the local Voting Rights Museum she helped to found on the premises of the former White Citizens' Council to which Smitherman belonged, said segregation remained in housing and business, too.