The History of Food Traditions, Culture, And Systems And The History of Campaigns And Movements For, About, And Involving Food
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Back to School Foodways Series: Part 1 Alabama State
Fried chicken recipes below
Freshmen Orientation at Babson College yesterday, my new academic home, signaled the start of new academic year. It’s also a special year for our family because my daughter Chase Asabe Opie is entering kindergarten and she’s very excited! I’m going to do some post on foodways and schools to celebrate the start of new academic year for students, teachers, and parents. Before he moved to Atlanta and became one of MLK’s deputies in the civil rights movement, Ralph David Abernathy led a student strike to protest food inequalities between faculty and students in the cafeteria of Alabama State College (Now Alabama State University (ASU) ). Abernathy enrolled in Alabama State in the late 1940s on the GI Bill after receiving an honorable discharge from the Army. Reflecting on the cafeteria food at AlabamaState, he remembers the students eating “heaps of steaming pork and beans—and nothing more, not even a piece of bread to sop it up,” for lunch. Dinner was not much different. He writes that the best dinner they ever had was Spam with unbuttered grits, while the faculty feasted on huge pieces of real country ham. “After several weeks of this fare, we were sick to death of it and were dreaming every night of fried chicken and biscuits.” Abernathy was elected student body president in his sophomore year. Right away he organized a complete student boycott of the cafeteria and it did not take long for the school’s administration to act: the next time the cafeteria opened at Alabama State, students “saw huge platters of fried chicken waiting at the counter.” Here a link to an ASU omenu so you can see how the food there has changed since the 1940s http://www.alasu.edu/current-students/dining/online-menus/index.aspx. Here’s a fried chicken recipe for college student living off campus without a meal card for the first time, that was my deal back in 1981.
Frederick Douglass Opie is the author of Hog and Hominy. His grassroots approach to writing about foodways reveals the global origins of American food, the forces that shaped its development, and the distinctive cultural collaborations that occurred among Africans, Asians, Europeans, and Americans throughout history. Opie shows how food can be an indicator of social position, a site of community building and cultural identity, and a juncture at which different cultural traditions can develop and impact the collective health of a community.
ADD Warning
For those, like my wife, who can’t stand typos, watch out! I have severe ADD which kept me from moving forward with this blog for too long. My friend encouraged me to start blogging and just disclose my disability the same way I do on the first day of class as a college professor. Folks I regularly make spelling mistakes because of my disability. In order to get two books and several academic journal articles published I use a professional copy editor. To blog that would take too much time and money. So if you can overlook my typos, enjoy my musings.
Frederick Douglass Opie lectures and writes about the history of food traditions, culture, and systems and how and why they have changed. He's interested in how people have historically thought and acted about food and the campaigns and movements for, about, and involving food. He is the author of three books including Hog and Hominy: Soul Food from Africa to America. Opie has appeared on the popular American Public Media show The Splendid Table, Good Food, and in the NYC Media television series Appetite City. Opie is a Professor of History and Foodways at Babson College in Massachusetts. He received his Ph.D. in history from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. For interviews and or booking send your contact information with a brief note via email to fdopie@gmail.com
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