Hog and Hominy: Soul Food From Africa to America

by Frederick Douglass

  28. Olmsted, A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States, 208–209.

  29. Ibid., 209.

  30. Abraham Oakey Hall, The Manhattaner in New Orleans; or, Phases of “Crescent City” Life (New York: J. S. Redfield, 1851), 10.

  31. Vera Kelsey, Brazil in Capitals (New York: Harper, 1942), 76; Andrade, Brazilian Cookery, 50, 56; Toussaint-Samson, A Parisian in Brazil, 30; Maria Graham, Journal of a Voyage to Brazil, and the Residence There, During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1824; reprint, New York: Praeger, 1969), 113, 122; Nieuhoff ’s Brazil (1813) in John Pinkerton, A General Collection of the Best and Most Interesting Voyages and Travels in all Parts of the World. . . (London: Longman, Hurst, Ross, Orme and Brown, 1813), 14:868.

  32. Karen Hess, The Carolina Rice Kitchen: The African Connection (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1992), 103–104; Toussaint-Samson, A Parisian in Brazil, 30; John Mawe, John Mawe’s Journey into the Interior of Brazil (1809), reprinted in Colonial Travelers in Latin America, ed. Irving A. Leonard (New York: Knopf, 1972), 212; Nieuhoff’s Brazil, 14:868; James C. Fletcher and D. P. Kidder, Brazil and the Brazilians Portrayed in Historical and Descriptive Sketches (Boston: Little Brown, and Company: London: Sampson, Low, Son, & Co, 1866), 125; Theodore Canot, Captain Canot; or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver: Being an Account of His Career and Adventures on the Coast, in the Interior, on Shipboard, and in the West Indies, Written out and edited from the Captain’s Journals, Memoranda and Conversations (New York: D. Appleton, 1854), 33, 38.

  33. Louis Agassiz and Elizabeth Agassiz, A Journey in Brazil (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1868; reprint, New York: Praeger, 1969), 73. See Toussaint-Samson, A Parisian in Brazil, 55, 80; Graham, Journal of a Voyage to Brazil, 166, 280.

  34. Olmsted, A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States, 143–144; Hilliard, Hog Meat and Hoecake, 43, 47, 55; Genovese, Roll Jordan Roll, 543, 548–549; Mendes, The African heritage Cookbook, 67, 69;

  35. Ira Berlin, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland, eds., Freedom’s Soldiers: The Black Military Experience in the Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 89; see 2–3. See also Edwin S. Redkey, ed., A Grand Army of Black Men: Letters from African-American Soldiers in the Union Army, 1861–1865 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 260–261.

  36. Samuel H. Sprott, Cush: A Civil War Memoir, ed. Louis R. Smith, Jr., and Andrew Quist (Livingston: University of West Alabama, Livingston Press, 1999), 124; Alex Haley, Roots (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1976), 534.

  37. Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, Freedom’s Soldiers, 36.

  38. Wiley, The Life of Johnny Reb, 104–105; Sprott, Cush, 16, 114; Haley, Roots, 542, 547.

  39. Lee, J. Edward Lee and Ron Chepesiuk, eds., South Carolina in the Civil War: The Confederate Experience in Letters and Diaries (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2000), 89–91, 141; Bell Irvin Wiley, The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy, (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1971), 101, 103.

  40. Harvey A. Levenstein, Revolution at the Table: The Transformation of the American Diet (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 27. See Eliza McHatton-Ripley, From Flag to Flag; a Woman’s Adventures and Experiences in the South During the War, in Mexico, and in Cuba (New York, D. Appleton, 1889), 247–248.

  41. Samuel H. Lockett, Louisiana as It Is: A Geographical and Topographical Description of the State (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969), 48.

  42. Wilbur O. Atwater and Charles D. Woods, Dietary Studies with Reference to the Food of the Negro in Alabama in 1895 and 1896, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Office of Experiment Stations, bulletin no. 38 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1897), 7.

  43. Emma Speed Sampson, Miss Minerva’s Cook Book. De Way to a Man’s Heart (Chicago, 1931), 99.

  44. Ibid.

  45. Ibid., 268. See Atwater and Woods, Dietary Studies, 11.

  46. Margaret Cussler and Mary L. de Give, ’Twixt the Cup and the Lip: Psychological and Socio-Cultural Factors Affecting Food Habits (Washington, D.C.: Consortium, 1952), 248–249.

  47. Joyce White, Soul Food: Recipes and Reflections from African-American Churches (New York: HarperCollins, 1998), 252.

  48. Atwater and Woods, Dietary Studies, 19 (see also 16–17); H. D. Frissel and Isabel Bevier, Dietary Studies of Negroes in Eastern Virginia in 1897 and 1898, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Office of Experiment Stations, bulletin no. 71, (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1899), 8.

  49. Atwater and Woods, Dietary Studies, 20, 26; Sampson, Miss Minerva’s Cook Book, 33.

  50. Bennett Marshall and Gertha Couric, “Alabama Barbecue,” p. 1–3, WPA State Records, “America Eats” Collection, Alabama, Box A 18, file entitled “Alabama Cuisine.”

  51. Frissel and Bevier, Dietary Studies of Negroes in Eastern Virginia, 8, 11.

  52. Atwater and Woods, Dietary Studies, 20.

  53. John Smith, “Descriptions of Virginia and Proceedings of the Colonie by Captain John Smith, 1612,” in Narratives of Early Virginia 1606–1625, ed. Lyon Gardiner Tyler, vol. 5 of Original Narratives of Early American History, ed. J. Franklin Jameson (New York: Scribner’s, 1907), 96–97; Northup, Twelve Years a Slave, 128; Fletcher Douglas Srygley, Seventy Years in Dixie: Recollections and Sayings of T. W. Caskey and Others (Nashville, Tenn.: Gospel Advocate, 1893), 86.

  54. Atwater and Woods, Dietary Studies, 21.

  55. Wendell B. Brooks Phillips, “Hog Killing,” p. 1, box A 397, file, South Carolina Cuisine, WPA State Records Related, “America Eats” Collection; Atwater and Woods, Dietary Studies, 21.

  56. Atwater and Woods, Dietary Studies, 64; Frissel and Bevier, Dietary Studies of Negroes in Eastern Virginia, 40; A. L. Tommie Bass, Plain Southern Eating from the Reminiscences of A. L. Tommie Bass, Herbalist, ed. John K. Crellin (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1988), 66.

  57. Karen Iacobbo and Michael Iacobbo, Vegetarian America: A History (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2004); Colin Spencer, Heretic’s Feast: A History of Vegetarianism (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1996).

  58. Joe Gray Taylor, Eating, Drinking, and Visiting in the South: An Informal History (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982), 47–48, 109.

  59. Floris Barnett Cash, African American Women and Social Action: The Clubwomen and Volunteerism from Jim Crow to the New Deal, 1896–1936 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2001), 67–72; Cynthia Neverdon-Morton, “Self-Help Programs as Educative Activities of Black Women in the South, 1895–1925: Focus on Four Key Areas,” Journal of Negro Education 51, no. 3 (Summer 1982): 210–216; Gerda Lerner, “Early Community Work of Black Club Women,” Journal of Negro History 59, no. 2 (April 1974): 159–160.

  60. Jacqueline Anne Rouse, “Out of the Shadow of Tuskegee: Margaret Murray Washington, Social Activism, and Race Vindication,” Journal of Negro History 81, no. 1/4 (Winter–Autumn 1996): 35–37; Deborah Gray White, Too Heavy a Load: Black Women in Defense of Themselves, 1894–1994 (New York: Norton, 1999), 24–30.

  61. Rouse, “Out of the Shadow of Tuskegee,” 33; Anne Firor Scott, “The Most Invisible of Them All: Black Women’s Voluntary Associations,” Journal of Southern History 56, no. 1 (February 1990): 16–22.

  62. Rouse, “Out of the Shadow of Tuskegee,” 34, 41–43.

  63. The Booker T. Washington papers, vol. 5, 1899–1900, ed. Louis R. Harlan, Raymond W. Smock, and Barbara S. Kraft (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976), 270.

  64. The Booker T. Washington Papers, vol. 4, 1895–98, ed. Louis R. Harlan, Stuart B. Kaufman, Barbara S. Kraft, and Raymond W. Smock (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1975), 64.

  65. James Weldon Johnson, Along This Way: The Autobiography of James Weldon Johnson (New York: Viking, 1933), 107–109.

  66. Clifton Johnson, Highways and Byways of the South (New York: Macmillan, 1904), 46. See Srygley, Seventy Years in Dixie, 330–331; Johnson, Along This Way, 76–77, 330–331.

  67. Johnson, Along Th
is Way, 33, 54, 64–65.

  68. Ibid., 54.

  69. Taylor, Eating, Drinking, and Visiting in the South, 116–117.

  70. Ibid., 117–118.

  71. This concept is gleaned from David D. Hall, ed., Lived Religion in America: Toward a History of Practice (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997).

  72. For an overview of themes in African American religious history, see Timothy F. Fulop and Albert J. Raboteau, eds., African-American Religion: Interpretive Essays in History and Culture (New York: Routledge, 1997).

  73. Atwater and Woods, Dietary Studies, 18.

  74. W. E. B. Du Bois, W. E. B. Du Bois, Writings: The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade, The Souls of Black Folk, Dusk of Dawn, Essays and Articles (New York: Library of America, 1986), 496.

  75. Michael Perman, Struggle for Mastery: Disfranchisement in the South, 1888–1908, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 244–247, 269; Jane Dailey, Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, and Bryant Simon, eds., Jumpin’ Jim Crow: Southern Politics from Civil War to Civil Rights (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000), 3–4.

  76. Ernest Von Hesse-Wartegg, Travels on the Lower Mississippi, 1879–1880: A Memoir by Ernest Von Hesse-Wartegy, trans. and ed. Frederic Trautman (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1990), 99.

  77. Weekly Louisianian (New Orleans), January 8, 1881.

  78. Race riots started in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1906; East St. Louis in May 1917; Houston, Texas, in August 1917; South Carolina on May 10, 1919; Longview, Texas, on July 11, 1919; Washington, D.C., on July 20, 1919; Chicago on July 27, 1919; Knoxville, Tennessee, on August 30, 1919; Omaha, Nebraska, on September 28, 1919; Elaine, Arkansas, on October 1, 1919; and Tulsa, Oklahoma, on May 1921. See Robert V. Haynes, A Night of Violence: The Houston Riot of 1917 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1976), 18–19; Lee E. Williams and Lee E. Williams II, Anatomy of Four Race Riots: Racial Conflict in Knoxville, Elaine (Arkansas), Tulsa, and Chicago, 1919–1921 (Hattiesburg: University and College Press of Mississippi, 1972), 4; Elliott M. Rudwick, Race Riot at East St. Louis, July 2, 1917 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1964), 4; Stephen A. Gura, “The Limits of Mob Law: The Elaine Race Riot of 1919” (honor thesis., Emory University, 1983), 31–32; Scott Ellsworth, Death in a Promised Land: The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982), 89.

  79. Rudwick, Race Riot, 210–213, 221; Williams and Williams, Anatomy of Four Race Riots, 6–7.

  80. Topeka Plain (Kansas), July 29, 1921, Tuskegee Institute News Clippings File, p. 0369 R 14.

  4. THE GREAT MIGRATION

  1. R. H. Leavell, T. R. Snavely, T. J. Woofter, Jr., W. T. B. Williams, and Francis D. Tyson, Negro Migration in 1916–17 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1919), 27, 58–61, 78–79, 115.

  2. Leavell et al., Negro Migration in 1916–17, 87, 104–105; Michael Perman, Struggle for Mastery: Disfranchisement in the South, 1888–1908 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 269.

  3. Leavell et al., Negro Migration in 1916–17, 101, 105, 107, 28–31. On the Great Migration in general, see Carole Marks, Farewell—We’re Good and Gone: The Great Black Migration (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989). On the migration to Chicago, see James Grossman, Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989). On Westchester County, see Andrew Wiese, Places of Their Own: African American Suburbanization in the Twentieth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), chap. 2. On Harlem, see Gilbert Osofsky, Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto. Negro New York, 1890–1930 (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1964). On Cleveland, see Kenneth L. Kusmer, A Ghetto Takes Shape: Black Cleveland, 1870–1930 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976).

  4. For more on the Harlem Renaissance, see Anne Elizabeth Carroll, Word, Image, and the New Negro: Representation and Identity in the Harlem Renaissance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005).

  5. Sheila Ferguson, Soul Food: Classic Cuisine From the Deep South (New York: Grove Press, 1989), xiii–xiv; Langston Hughes, The Langston Hughes Reader (New York: Braziller, w31958), 368–371.

  6. The term “freedom belt” comes from Gene Baro, “Soul Food,” Vogue 155 (March 1970), 80.

  7. James Weldon Johnson, Along This Way: The Autobiography of James Weldon Johnson (New York: Viking, 1933), 64–65. See Leavell et al., Negro Migration, 28; Louis Armstrong, Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans (New York: Da Capo, 1986), 189; Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969; reprint, New York: Bantam, 1970), 4.

  8. Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, 4.

  9. Alexander Smalls, Grace the Table: Stories and Recipes from My Southern Revival, with Hattie Jones (New York: HarperCollins, 1997), 16–17.

  10. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., Adam by Adam: The Autobiography of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. (New York: Dial, 1971), 1–8.

  11. Ibid., 17–18.

  12. Ibid., 16.

  13. Ferguson, Soul Food, xxi–xxvi.

  14. Smalls, Grace the Table, 18–20, 65–66; Joyce White, Soul Food: Recipes and Reflections from African-American Churches (New York: HarperCollins, 1998), 149.

  15. St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton, Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City (1945; reprint, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993); Tracy N. Poe, “The Origins of Soul Food in Black Urban Identity: Chicago, 1915–1947,” American Studies International 37, no. 1 (February 1999): 5–7.

  16. Drake and Cayton, Black Metropolis, 608.

  17. Ibid., 547.

  18. Ibid., 578–579.

  19. A. D. A. Moser, “Farm Family Diets in the Lower Coastal Plains of South Carolina,” South Carolina Agricultural Experiment Station, Clemson Agricultural College, bulletin no. 319, June 1939; idem, “Food Habits of South Carolina Farm Families,” South Carolina Agricultural Experiment Station, Clemson Agricultural College, bulletin no. 343, November 1942.

  20. Moser, “Food Habits of South Carolina Farm Families,” 25.

  21. Moser, “Farm Family Diets in the Lower Coastal Plains of South Carolina,” 42–44.

  22. Dorothy Dickins, “A Nutrition Investigation of Negro Tenants in the Yazoo Mississippi Delta,” Mississippi Agricultural Experiment Station, A & M College, bulletin no. 254, August 1928, 33.

  23. Moser, “Farm Family Diets in the Lower Coastal Plains of South Carolina,” 42–44.

  24. Moser, “Lower Coastal Plains of South Carolina Farm Families,” 44–45.

  25. Moser, “Lower Coastal Plains of South Carolina Farm Families,” 45.

  26. Ibid., 42–45.

  27. Dickins, “A Nutrition Investigation of Negro Tenants,” 35.

  28. Ibid., 45–47.

  29. For more on Caribbean migration to New York, see Frederick Douglass Opie, “Eating, Dancing, and Courting in New York: Black and Latino Relations, 1930–1970,” Journal of Social History (forthcoming).

  30. Harvey Brett, “Report on Cuban Population in N.Y.C.,” November 25, 1935, p. 3 (see also pp. 1, 4), “Feeding the City Project Collection,” WPA Papers, New York City Municipal Archives, New York, N.Y. (hereafter FCWPA), roll 269; Strong, “Puerto Rican Colony in N. Y.,” 1935(?), p. 2, FCWPA, roll 269.

  31. Jose Pastrana, “Fuentes Restaurant 1326 Fifth Avenue,” December 10, 1940, pp. 1–2, “Eating Out in Foreign Restaurants,” FCWPA, roll 144.

  32. Ibid., 3; “Central American, Spanish American,” p. 11, “Eating Out in Foreign Restaurants,” FCWPA, roll 153.

  33. Jose Pastrana, “El Favorito Restaurant,” pp. 1–2, FCWPA, roll 269.

  34. Ibid., 2–4; Strong, “Puerto Rican Colony in N. Y.,” pp. 3–4.

  35. “Street Vendors,” pp. 7–9, FCWPA, roll 153.

  36. Sarah Chavez, “Harlem Restaurants,” September 26, 1940, p. 2, FCWPA, roll 144.

  37. Wiese, Places of Their Own, 26.

  38. Margaret B. (Cooper) Opie, interview, summer 2005; Katie (White) Green, interview, summer 2005.r />
  39. Green, interview.

  40. Ella (Christopher) Barnett, interview, summer 2005.

  41. Ibid.

  42. Ibid.

  43. Ibid.; Opie family bible, consulted in Cloverdale, Virginia.

  44. 1930 federal census of the village of North Tarrytown.

  45. Fred Opie, Jr., interview, summer 2005.

  46. Ibid.

  47. Dorothy Opie, interview, summer 2005.

  48. Fred Opie, Jr., interview.

  49. Barnett, interview.

  50. For more on African-American migration to Harlem, see Osofsky, Harlem.

  51. Nora White, interview, summer 2005.

  52. Verta Mae Smart-Grosvenor, “Soul Food,” McCall’s 97 (September 1970): 72.

  53. Pearl Bowser and Joan Eckstein, A Pinch of Soul in Book Form (New York: Avon, 1969), 13.

  54. Smalls, Grace the Table, 6, 18–20.

  55. Bowser and Eckstein, A Pinch of Soul in Book Form, 190.

  56. Ibid., 13, 154.

  57. Nettie C. Banks, interview, summer 2005.

  58. Green, interview.

  59. White, interview.

  60. A. L. Tommie Bass, Plain Southern Eating from the Reminiscences of A. L. Tommie Bass, Herbalist, ed. John K. Crellin (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1988), 79–80; White, Soul Food, 297–298.

  61. Ruth and Roy Miller, interview, 2005.

  62. Clara Bullard Pittman, interview, summer 2005.

  63. Outlaw, interview.

  64. White, interview.

  65. Yemaja Jubilee, interview, summer 2005

  66. Banks, interview.

  67. Reginald T. Ward, interview, summer 2005.

  68. White, Soul Food, 293.

  69. Stephen Erwin, “Collards,” November 14, 1984, box 1, Autobiographical Writings, Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library Duke University.

  70. White, Soul Food, 293.

  71. Ibid., 273.

  72. Drake and Cayton, Black Metropolis, 613.

  73. Ibid., 381.

  74. Ibid., 418.

  75. Ibid., 423.

  76. Frances Warren and Jim Warren, interview, summer 2005.

  77. Ward, interview.