Martha Jean Evans was fresh off the bus from tiny Crawfordville, Georgia, in the fall of 1973. On her own in Atlanta and in need of a job, the teenager spotted an opening in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s classified ads. And off she went to find a place she had never heard of, Mary Mac’s Tea Room.
“I was walking down Ponce looking for the [address] number,” she recalled in a 2016 interview with Oxford University Press. “I walked by it and walked to Krispy Kreme, and then walked back. Margaret Lupo the owner, I guess she happened to see me and said, ‘Sweetheart, are you looking for anything?’ I said, ‘Yes ma’am I’m looking for a number. I really need a job.’
“She said, ‘Well you found the perfect place,’ and told me to come right on in. And I been here ever since.”
Starting in the kitchen, within two years Evans became the first Black server at Mary Mac’s, where she spent the next 47 years serving and bantering and laughing her big, hearty laugh with Congressman John Lewis, singer James Brown, mayors Maynard Jackson and Shirley Franklin, members of the Martin Luther King family and countless regular folks who would come in and specifically request a table where she was working.
“She probably had more regulars come in and ask for her than anybody else,” said Tina Leftwich, general manager of Mary Mac’s.
“You’d come in and you know you’re gonna have a great day when she’s working,” Leftwich said. “She always was smiling, always had something crazy or off the wall to talk about, always wanted to make sure everyone had a good time.”
Credit: Henri Hollis
Credit: Henri Hollis
Martha Jean Evans, known to all as Martha Jean, died Sept. 5, 2024, at Emory Midtown Hospital of West Nile virus. She was 69 years old.
She was born Martha Collins on Oct. 21, 1954, in Crawfordville in Taliaferro County, 90 miles east of Atlanta. After graduating high school in 1972, she made her way to Atlanta and Mary Mac’s.
A local institution, Mary Mac’s was called Mrs. Fuller’s Tea Room when it opened in 1945; when Mary McKenzie bought the restaurant in 1951, she changed the name. At the time, the few women who owned Atlanta restaurants thought “tea room” sounded more refined, even though Mary Mac’s was always closer to a “meat and three” and never really a tea room. For years, until Evans broke the color barrier, the servers were all white.
The menu is famous for never or hardly ever changing over the decades, going heavy on fried chicken, meat loaf, collard greens, mac and cheese, peach cobbler, pot likker, cornbread and yeast rolls. Every table still has a bottle of hot pepper vinegar for the collards.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
After starting at Mary Mac’s, Martha Jean married David Evans, and the couple had three children. They later divorced.
“She showed up for everything,” said her daughter Tanika Brown-Collins. “Even the kids in the neighborhood knew Miss Martha would show up for their sports games, for everything.”
Evans was known for dancing during her shifts at Mary Mac’s, and most any time for that matter.
“We’d have these employee appreciation parties and the whippersnappers would think they were gonna get down and show off,” said Nyte Owens, a Mary Mac’s server who was trained by Evans years ago.
“And she’d say, ‘Clear the floor, clear the floor.’ She was not shy about showing off. She danced and moved better than those whippersnappers.”
Her daughter recalled that she also loved to sing, especially with her favorite song, “Young Hearts Run Free,” a 1976 disco hit by Candi Staton.
Evans and three other Mary Mac’s servers of her generation were referred to affectionately as “The Golden Girls.”
“Nobody could break that bond that they had,” said Leftwich.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
She was a member of Little Rock Baptist Church in East Atlanta, and played the Georgia Five lottery twice a day, said her daughter.
When Mary Mac’s closed temporarily in 2020 due to the COVID-19 epidemic, Evans decided to retire and did not come back to work when the restaurant reopened.
“We have our annual employee Christmas party, and the last one she went to, before COVID, she was out on the dance floor more than any of the young ones,” recalled Leftwich.
Evans contracted West Nile virus in late August and was hospitalized with it for about two weeks before her death. “Her body just wasn’t strong enough to fight it,” said Collins-Brown.
Mary Mac’s has framed photos of Evans hanging on its walls, as well as framed magazine articles that mention her. Leftwich said the restaurant is commissioning an oil painting of her that will hang on its “Legacy Wall” along with other honored past employees.
She is survived by brothers Tommy Lee Collins and Homer Collins; sister Loretha Collins; daughters Blonitha Collins-Baitey (Charles) and Tamika Collins-Brown (Travis); son David Evans Jr. (Pearl); and grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Services are scheduled at 2:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 14, at Gus Thornhill’s Funeral Home, 1315 Gus Thornhill Jr. Dr., East Point, Georgia.
