Shauna Anderson

Shauna Anderson, Original Chitlin Bucket Design and Caricature

Shauna Anderson was born in Washington, D.C. to Geneva Anderson, a professional singer and piano player and Walter Christopher Holmes, a saxophone player.[2] She remembers watching her mother fondly from a crib backstage at Evans Grill in Forestville, Maryland, a special treat since her godfather, Clarence Evans, owned the club. In fact, in Anderson’s autobiography, she remembers being told that her mother left the stage at Evan’s Grill to give birth to her one night. Evans Grill was a stop on the Chitlin Circuit, a touring circuit of Black musicians before desegregation, and where young Shauna got her first taste of the business world as a young toddler listening in on business deals involving James Brown, Otis Redding, Ike and Tina Turner, The Orioles, Gene Chandler, Ray Charles, Little Richard, and Fats Domino while munching on DC’s staple, half-smoked sausages. She plans to preserve this musical legacy by reviving Evans Grill. With such a strong musical legacy in her family, it’s no surprise that she is  the aunt of the founders of two premier gogo bands in DC, Derrick Holmes Jr. of DCVYBE and Garland Holmes Jr. of Persevir Band.

Outside of Evans Grill, Shauna was raised by her maternal grandmother, Virginia L. Battle. In an article in the Washington Post, Shauna Anderson shared that it was actually her grandmother who taught her how to clean pig intestines. Her grandmother always told her that she could do anything so when she was looking to make additional income, she did what no one was doing before. She and a childhood friend called restaurants one by one to see if they’d be interested in cleaned chitlins.

Original Chitlin Market Location

Shauna Anderson worked as an Economic Statistician with the Internal Revenue Service for 15 years, eventually utilizing the accounting and wealth-building skills she learned at the IRS to begin her entrepreneurial ventures. She discovered that the Maryland Health Department and the U.S. Department of Agriculture had no regulations for cleaning chitterlings. so she developed her own and in 1995 opened her restaurant, "The Chitlin Market" in Prince George’s County, Maryland. The following year, she launched a website and began shipping her chitterlings all over the world. Her "Hand Cleaned Pork Chitterlings" earned her the moniker "The Queen of Chitlins" by former Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr., and Saveur Magazine named Anderson "the source for chitlins". In 2003, the Smithsonian Center for African American History called The Chitlin Market and asked them to contribute to their collection. She was honored to have something she created and museum used in the same sentence. This museum has been renamed the Smithsonian Anacostia Museum and is located in Washington, DC.  In 2004, Anderson’s loyal following outgrew her original location and she began to search for a larger location. She sold chitlins from a trailer while she waited to obtain the permits.[1]

Amidst this praise and preservation, her restaurant was not well received by some in the community. In her autobiography, Offal Great: Memoirs of The Chitlin Queen, she recalls her restaurant being vandalized, members of the city council voicing opposition to the smell of chitlins, and health inspectors coming for many unscheduled visits.  In 2006, Anderson sued the county for what she claims were deliberate, concerted efforts to shut down the Chitlin Market.[3] Her legal case was dismissed by Prince George's County Judge Sherri L. Krauser because her lawyer Paul W. Gardner II was suddenly investigated and found to have violated official standards of conducts for lawyers, unrelated to this case.[4] This prompted an investigation by Senator Barbara Mikulski's office who discovered that Prince Georges County Executive Jack B. Johnson was accepting bribes for that area that was being rezoned.  The FBI became involved and arrested and convicted Jack B. Johnson and his wife, Leslie Johnson.[5]

Shauna Anderson was not swayed about not fitting into “developer’s idea of what’s acceptable”. Her business was depicted on an episode of ABC’s drama “Commander in Chief”, which sparked more outrage from city officials.[6] A 2006 news article from The Hill stated that her restaurant became a prop for ABC’s "stereotype of a poor, dangerous black neighborhood,” and the show was denounced by then County Executive Jack Johnson. Later that year, the area where her expanded restaurant was located was rezoned into a residential neighborhood.[7]

She currently sells chitlins online and directly to restaurants and churches and dreams of reopening Evans Grill Center for the Performing Arts as a place to celebrate African American and Southern food, music, and dance. Anderson's work has been featured in Saveur Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Jet Magazine and CNN.

• Anderson, Shauna; Place, Elizabeth, Offal Great-A Memoir from the Queen of Chitlins, Hyattsville, MD 2006. ISBN 978-0-9792878-0-0

• Trescott, Jacqueline (April 23, 2003). "Guts Get Some Overdue Glory: Chitlin Merchant's Gift Feeds Museum's Plans." The Washington Post.
• Lewis, Nicole. "Shauna Anderson is using real estate to create multiple streams of income". Black Enterprise Magazine.
• Randle, Leila. "Newsletter May 2003". Soul Family Travels. Retrieved November 1, 2019.
• Nicholls, Walter. "Guts to Glory". www.washingtonpost.com. The Washington Post. Retrieved October 22, 2019.
• Delaney, Arthur. "Queen of Chitlins wages war on PG County Council". www.thehill.com. The Hill. Retrieved November 5, 2019.
• "Maryland Businesswoman Sues County". Global Wire. Retrieved October 22, 2019.
• Meyer, Eugene. "Cashing in on Chitlins". www.washingtonpost.com. The Washington Post. Retrieved October 15, 2019.
• Merida, Kevin (May 5, 2002). ""Gut Instinct Chitlins online seemed like a good idea at the time. And it still does"". The Washington Post.

• Shauna Anderson website