Hog and Hominy: Soul Food From Africa to America Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Half title

  Arts & Traditions of the Table

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Contents

  List of Illustrations

  Introduction

  1: The Atlantic Slave Trade and the Columbian Exchange

  2: Adding to my Bread and Greens: Enslaved Cookery in British Colonial America

  3: Hog and Hominy: Southern Foodways in the Nineteenth Century

  4: The Great Migration: From the Black Belt to the Freedom Belt

  5: The Beans and Greens of Necessity: African Americans and the Great Depression

  6: Eating Jim Crow: Restaurants, Barbecue Stands, and Bars and Grills During Segregation

  7: The Chitlin Circuit: The Origins and Meanings of Soul and Soul Food

  8: The Declining Influence of Soul Food: The Growth of Caribbean Cuisine in Urban Areas

  9: Food Rebels: African American Critics and Opponents of Soul Food

  Epilogue

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Index

  Hog & Hominy

  ARTS & TRADITIONS OF THE TABLE

  ARTS & TRADITIONS OF THE TABLE

  PERSPECTIVES ON CULINARY HISTORY

  Albert Sonnenfeld, Series Editor

  Salt: Grain of Life

  Pierre Laszlo, translated by Mary Beth Mader

  Culture of the Fork

  Giovanni Rebora, translated by Albert Sonnenfeld

  French Gastronomy: The History and Geography of a Passion

  Jean-Robert Pitte, translated by Jody Gladding

  Pasta: The Story of a Universal Food

  Silvano Serventi and Françoise Sabban, translated by Antony Shugar

  Slow Food: The Case for Taste

  Carlo Petrini, translated by William McCuaig

  Italian Cuisine: A Cultural History

  Alberto Capatti and Massimo Montanari, translated by Áine O’Healy

  British Food: An Extraordinary Thousand Years of History

  Colin Spencer

  A Revolution in Eating: How the Quest for Food Shaped America

  James E. McWilliams

  Sacred Cow, Mad Cow: A History of Food Fears

  Madeleine Ferrières, translated by Jody Gladding

  Molecular Gastronomy: Exploring the Science of Flavor

  Hervé This, translated by M. B. DeBevoise

  Food Is Culture

  Massimo Montanari, translated by Albert Sonnenfeld

  Kitchen Mysteries: Revealing the Science of Cooking

  Hervé This, translated by Jody Gladding

  Gastropolis: Food and New York City

  Edited by Annie Hauck-Lawson and Jonathan Deutsch

  COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS • NEW YORK

  COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS

  Publishers Since 1893

  New York Chichester, West Sussex

  cup.columbia.edu

  Copyright © 2008 Columbia University Press

  All rights reserved

  E-ISBN 978-0-231-51797-3

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Opie, Frederick Douglass.

  Hog and hominy : soul food from Africa to America / Frederick Douglass Opie.

  p. cm — (Arts and traditions of the table)

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 978-0-231-14638-8 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-231-14639-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-231-51797-3 (e-book)

  1. African American cookery—History. 2. African Americans—Food—History. 3. African Americans—Social life and customs. 4. Cookery, American—Southern style—History. 5. Cookery—American—History. 6. Food habits—America—History. 7. Blacks—Food—America—History. 8. Blacks—America—Social life and customs. 9. Cookery, African—History. 10. Food habits—Africa—History.

  I. Title. II. Series

  TX715.0548 2008

  641.59′296073—DC22 2008020309

  A Columbia University Press E-book.

  CUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at [email protected].

  References to Internet Web sites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Columbia University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

  DESIGN & TYPESETTING BY vin dang

  THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO “Super,” the nickname of my paternal grandfather, Fred Opie, Sr., whom I never met but heard so much about, as well as to Grandma Opie, whose minced meat and rhubarb pies kept me happy and full. The book is also dedicated to Luesta Duers, the gracious matriarch on my mother’s side and my maternal grandmother. Finally, the book is dedicated to my wife, Tina, and my children, Kennedy Kwabena and Chase Asabe Opie. Thanks for helping me maintain a balanced life while I researched and wrote this book over the last seven years.

  Contents

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  INTRODUCTION

  1 • THE ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE AND THE COLUMBIAN EXCHANGE

  2 • ADDING TO MY BREAD AND GREENS

  Enslaved Cookery in British Colonial America

  3 • HOG AND HOMINY

  Southern Foodways in the Nineteenth Century

  4 • THE GREAT MIGRATION

  From the Black Belt to the Freedom Belt

  5 • THE BEANS AND GREENS OF NECESSITY

  African Americans and the Great Depression

  6 • EATING JIM CROW

  Restaurants, Barbecue Stands, and Bars and Grills During Segregation

  7 • THE CHITLIN CIRCUIT

  The Origins and Meanings of Soul and Soul Food

  8 • THE DECLINING INFLUENCE OF SOUL FOOD

  The Growth of Caribbean Cuisine in Urban Areas

  9 • FOOD REBELS

  African American Critics and Opponents of Soul Food

  EPILOGUE

  NOTES BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX

  Illustrations

  1.1 “Dining with Kaffr Chief”

  1.2 “The Slave Deck of the Bark ‘Wildfire’”

  2.1 “A Representation of the Sugar-Cane and the Art of Making Sugar”

  3.1 “Sweet Potatoe Planting—James Hopkinson’s Plantation.”

  3.2 African American army cook at work in City Point, Virginia.

  3.3 Old African American couple eating at the table by fireplace

  3.4 Ten African American women in cooking class at Hampton Institute

  4.1 Negro tenant farmer eating breakfast in Creek County, Oklahoma

  4.2 Fred Opie, Sr.; Jane Dimmie and Lucy Dimmie Opie

  4.3 Cooking fried supper for a benefit picnic

  5.1 Unemployed men in front of Al Capone’s soup kitchen

  5.2 Federal food surplus distribution in Cleveland, Ohio

  5.3 Cook at Father Divine Mission, Harlem

  5.4 U.S. government pork being distributed to jobless residents in New York City

  6.1 African American sitting on bench at side of barbecue stand

  6.2 Barbecue stand, Fort Benning, Columbus, Ga.

  6.3 “Hot Fish”: Bryant’s Place, Memphis, Tenn.

  6.4 “White” and “Colored,” Durham, N.C.

  7.1 Negro bunkhouse, Childersburg, Ala.

  7.2 Negro café, Washington, D.C.

  8.1 1950 map of the streets occupied by blacks and Latinos in the Tarrytowns

  9.1 World heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali, right, with Black Muslim leader Malcolm X, New York City, March 1, 1964

  9.2 Comedian Dick Gregory speaking at the University of South Florida, April
14, 1971

  10.1 A Sunday morning at M & G Diner on West 125th Street, Harlem, New York

  10.2 Manna’s Buffet and Catering Service, Harlem

  Introduction

  The culinary tradition known as “soul food” has been widely celebrated, as jazz music has been celebrated, as part of African American culture. This book offers a broad look at the history of soul food, as it came to be called during the black power movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and at its social and religious meanings, particularly its relationship to the concept of “soul” itself. In recent years, many food scholars, food enthusiasts, cookbook authors, and others have debated what events, forces, and movements shaped the development of African American foodways, but few have turned their attention to tracing the concept of soul in African American foodways, where it appeared long before the name “soul food” was coined.

  In the course of my research for this project, I have arrived at multiple definitions of “soul” and “soul food.” As I understand it, soul is the product of a cultural mixture of various African tribes and kingdoms. Soul is the style of rural folk culture. Soul is black spirituality and experiential wisdom. And soul is putting a premium on suffering, endurance, and surviving with dignity. Soul food is African American, but it was influenced by other cultures. It is the intellectual invention and property of African Americans. Soul food is a fabulous-tasting dish made from simple, inexpensive ingredients. Soul food is enjoyed by black folk, whom it reminds of their southern roots. This book argues, then, that soul is an amalgamation of West African societies and cultures, as well as an adaptation to conditions of slavery and freedom in the Americas. African Americans developed a cultural identity through soul and the associated foodways of people of African descent over hundreds of years.

  This project seeks to understand the history of soul and its relationship to people of African descent and their food within an Atlantic world context. This required investigating the traditions of Africans and the culinary traditions they absorbed from Europeans, especially Iberians. I also had to take into account the influence of Asian food. In doing so, I build on the pioneering work of Helen Mendes, Verta Mae Grosvenor, Sidney W. Mintz, Karen Hess, Howard Paige, Jessica Harris, and, most recently, Psyche Williams-Forson.1 Additionally, I unearth and make use of often forgotten work by anthropologists and sociologists who have written about soul, among them, Ulf Hannerz, Lee Rainwater, and Robert Blauner.2 Finally, I draw on recent scholarship on black power culture and politics by Doris Witt and William Van Deburg.3

  The African American ideologues of soul food, with the exception of Verta Mae Grosvenor, failed to embrace and incorporate cuisines of other peoples of African descent migrating to the United States from the Caribbean after the turn of the century. Their concept of soul food evolved during the black power era of the 1960s and was largely exclusionary of other cuisines of the African diaspora present in U.S. urban communities. Partisans of the soul ideology juxtaposed southern black cuisine and southern black folkways against what they perceived as a dominant white culture, and they defined southern-based black cuisine as a marker of cultural blackness. But where does that place the equally African-influenced cuisines that began to proliferate in multiethnic communities of color in, for example, metropolitan New York as early as the 1930s? This book takes a more inclusive approach to the development of black urban food markers of identity that argues that jerked chicken, empanadas, patties, cucu, coconut bread, mafungo, mangu, chicharrones, ropa vieja, and fried plantains, to name just a few foods, are as much soul food as collards, Hoppin John, fried chicken, corn bread, and sweat potato pie. A trip to New York, Miami, Boston, Bridgeport, Hartford, or scores of other urban centers reveals that for every soul food restaurant today, there are many more Caribbean restaurants. And the cuisines of those restaurants are at least as African influenced as any southern soul food.

  There is vast variety in African American cookery. I focus my attention on Virginia, the Carolinas, Alabama, Georgia, the Caribbean, and metropolitan New York, where many blacks and Latinos from these regions migrated between approximately the 1930s and the 1980s. My sources include travel accounts, government documents (including the WPA’s “America Eats” records, agricultural experiment station reports on food and diet in the South, and photographs), newspapers, magazines, autobiographies, and some ethnography. Employing the methods of social history and cultural anthropology, I also conducted some thirty interviews with African Americans and European Americans, most of them born before 1945 and ten of them members of my own extended family. These are oral histories of southerners talking about food—people like my ninety-five-year-old cousin, Gold, who was born in the South and raised by sharecroppers and domestic servants who cooked a variety of soul food dishes to sustain their families. They frequented jim crow eateries, feasted regularly at black church events, and recalled the growing popularity of the terms “soul” and “soul food” during the black power movement. Some never left the South, and others were southerners or the children of southerners who had migrated to metropolitan New York. I collected their histories to learn more about eating as it pertained to the Great Migration, the Depression, jim crow, the civil rights and black power movements, and the health fitness craze that followed. Interviews with kin and kith are too important to exclude simply because some historians may not like the idea of employing self-ethnography in a scholarly study. Instead, I made a conscious effort to temper the familiar interviews with archival sources and published primary sources.

  The exploration of soul food that follows begins with the cultural exchange that took place between the Portuguese and African nations in the early years of the Atlantic slave trade. The first chapter describes the spirituality and rural folk culture of West African cookery, looking particularly at special occasions, such as religious ceremonies and weddings. In chapter 2, I move to the culinary history of enslaved Africans in eighteenth-century America, focusing on the influence of Europeans and Native Americans on African cooking in the New World and introducing the first simple but tasty soul food dishes made in colonial Maryland, Virginia, the Caribbean, and the Carolinas. Here, I describe how Africans in British colonial America who had access to raw food materials and free time drew on African cultures to create regional soul food cuisines. The chapter that follows traces the story of enslaved African Americans’ cookery during the antebellum period, including descriptions of soulful, simple dishes made from rations, garden produce, and animals hunted on southern plantations. I consider black spirituality and soul food prepared on holidays and for religious revivals. The end of the chapter looks at the role of education in shaping the eating habits of African American farmers after emancipation.

  Chapter 4 moves north with black migrants to consider how the Great Migration changed the eating habits of African Americans. Southerners living in the North continued the soul food tradition of cooking with simple, inexpensive ingredients in order to survive—and even to thrive, for cooking and selling soul food in both formal and informal spaces in the urban North became a lucrative business. The fifth chapter considers eating during the 1930s and 1940s and the survival strategies black folk employed during the Great Depression and World War II, while the sixth investigates how jim crow limited African Americans’ options for eating outside their homes and contributed to the growth of African American–operated cafés, barbecue stands, and bar and grills. Important institutions in African American communities, these eateries played soul music, such as jazz and blues, and sold soul food: fried chicken, greens, corn bread, rolls, and sweet potato pie. These foods reminded people of their southern roots, and they formed the basis of the menu at the soul food restaurants that began opening in the 1960s.

  Chapter 7 traces the evolution of the terms “soul” and “soul food” during the civil rights and black power movements, arguing that soul food became a cultural expression of the black liberation struggle of the 1960s and 1970s. It also discusses the critique by African American
intellectuals such as Verta Mae Grosvenor of white southerners who tried to claim soul food recipes as their own inventions and property. Chapter 8 considers the seldom-discussed topic of African-influenced cuisines from the Caribbean on soul food in urban areas between the 1930s and the 1970s. The last chapter looks at the history of the health and nutrition movement in the African American community. The most influential agents of change were the Nation of Islam, advocates of natural food diets such as Alvenia Moody Fulton and comedian and activist Dick Gregory, and college- and university-educated African Americans. In the epilogue, I share some personal stories of how people have recently changed the cooking and preparation of traditional soul food dishes.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Special thanks to several scholars who graciously read chapter drafts of this project and provided very valuable suggestions for improving the book; these include historians George Reid Andrews, Daniel H. Usner, Jr., William L. Van Deburg, Stanlie M. James, and Donna R. Gabaccia. I also wish to think all three of the readers provided by Columbia University Press. I appreciated their enthusiasm for the project and their suggestions for its improvement. I believe that the manuscript is now considerably stronger for the revision.

  I also want to thank the many librarians who made my job as a historian possible: the librarians at the circulation desk at the Warren Public Library in Tarrytown, New York; Trevor Dawes, formerly of the Columbia University Library; Monica Riley in the interlibrary loan office at the Robert W. Woodruff Library of the Atlanta University Center; the Marist College librarians who handled my interlibrary loan requests; and the specialist collections archivists at Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Special thanks are also in order for the archivist at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland.

  In conclusion, I want to acknowledge the support and encouragement of Dr. Rodney Ellis of metropolitan Washington, D.C. Dr. Ellis allowed me to participate in a men’s fellowship health seminar held at a Temple Hills, Maryland, church in February 2000. My presentation entitled the “Origins of Soul Food” was the beginning of this book.