10/05/2026
FIVE GENERATIONS HAVE KEPT THIS SELMA BARBECUE TRADITION ALIVE
Some Alabama restaurants become popular because they are new. Lannie’s Bar-B-Q Spot became a Selma institution by refusing to forget what made people love it in the first place.
For more than 80 years, the family behind Lannie’s has served barbecue to generations of local residents, travelers, workers, activists, and families. The restaurant’s name honors Lannie, the family matriarch whose cooking helped establish the tradition.
Today, members of the founding family continue operating the business.
Lannie’s is known for slow-smoked pork, ribs, chicken, homemade sauce, fried okra, corn nuggets, and the piece of crackling traditionally placed on a barbecue plate. It is uncomplicated Alabama food served in a place where people care more about flavor and familiarity than fancy decoration.
The restaurant’s history is also tied to the larger story of Selma.
During the voting rights movement, Selma’s Black-owned restaurants provided food and gathering places for local residents and visiting organizers. Lannie’s fed people living through one of the most important periods in American history, but its survival cannot be reduced to one historic moment.
The restaurant continued serving Selma through economic changes, population loss, storms, and the daily challenges faced by small family businesses. A January 2023 tornado damaged the restaurant, but the family repaired and continued the operation.
That persistence matters.
Lannie’s represents something increasingly difficult to preserve: a Black-owned business that has passed through five generations without losing its connection to the community that sustained it.
The barbecue is important, but so is the continuity. Every plate carries the work of a family that kept showing up, kept cooking, and kept a piece of Black Selma alive.