Around the summer of 1961, NAACP leaders in Albany, Georgia invited SNCC and SCLC leaders to come and discuss a strategy for ending Jim Crow policies in schools eateries and other public spaces. Out side and local civil rights organizations collaborated with students from Albany State College (a HBCU), poor residents of the city, and country farmers to launch the Albany movement in November of 1961. City officials arrested and jailed hundreds for protesters participating in marches, pickets lines, sit-ins, and for attempting to registrar black voters. Angry white officials starved the jailed protesters to try and crush their resolve. The SCLC’s Ralph Abernathy describe one Albany women who showed her support by feeding the jailed members of the movement. “In the middle of the afternoon, the jailer came to us with a plate of fried chicken, potato salad, biscuits, and a huge apple pie. We [MLK and I] both rolled out of bed, starving. . . we looked down the hall and saw a little old black lady smiling and waving . . .Thank you, ma’ am,’ we called out and waved back. ‘You’re welcome,’ she said, ‘and that’s jus the beginning.’ . . . From that moment on we were never without food in our cell. Here is a potato salad recipe that would go well as a side dish for lunch or dinner.
Basic Southern Potato Salad Recipe Ingredients: 1 – pound red potato 1 – hard boiled egg (or extra firm ) finely chopped 1 – large celery rib, finely chopped 1/2 – cup mayonnaise (or vegan mayo) 1/2 small onion, finely chopped 1/2 – cup sweet pickle relish
Method: Thoroughly scrub potatoes, steam them in a large pot until they are tender, remove from the pot to cool, and then mash the un-skinned potatoes in a large bowl. Combine the mashed potatoes with the other ingredients and mix well. Season to taste with sea salt, fresh ground pepper, paprika, and a little fresh chopped thyme and parsley. Refrigerate for about an hour before serving salad cold.
Born 1938 in Hampton County, South Carolina, Vertamae Smart Grosvenor is among many titles, culinary anthropologist, NPR correspondent, and author. From low country South Carolina, she is perhaps best known for her food memoir Vibration Cooking, also known as The Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl (1970) http://www.abaa.org/books/33044511.html. I talk about her in my book Hog and Hominy: Soul Food from Africa to Americahttp://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-14638-8/hog-and-hominy. In the 1960s she lived in Harlem where she, among other activities, cooked “neck bones, chicken feet stew, biscuits, greens, and grits” and “batches of fried chicken and potato salad” for Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) fundraisers. She and her SNCC colleagues served the food at parties where supporters enjoyed her delicious low country food and the soulful music of James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gay, and other noted artist of that era. Like Montgomery’s Georgia Gilmore, and the Paschal brothers of Atlanta, Grosvenor played an important part in feeding the civil rights revolution of the 1960s. Here’s a buttermilk biscuit recipe reflected her contribution to advances the cause of SNCC and ending Jim Crow policies across the country.
Buttermilk Biscuit Recipe (makes about 10 biscuits): Nonstick cooking spray 2 cups spelt flour 1/8 teaspoon baking soda to up the flour rise/ or use 2 cups self-rising flour 1/8 teaspoon baking soda ½ teaspoon sea salt ¼ cup sugar 4 tablespoon vegetable shortening 2/3 cup heavy or whipping cream/half and half works too 1 cup buttermilk, or until dough is like cottage cheese 1 cup whole-wheat flour for shaping the wet dough into biscuits 2 tablespoons melted butter to brush over the baked biscuits Method: Preheat the oven to 425; spray cook sheet or cast iron skillet with non-stick spray; combine dry ingredients except for the 1 cup flour for shaping the dough; stir in buttermilk and cream and let stand for 2-3 minutes. Flour your hands and softly shape your biscuits. If you’re rushing, use an ice-cream scooper. Place the biscuits tightly against each other on wax paper so they will rise up instead of out. Sprinkle with flour then place then on the sprayed surface for baking. Bake for about 15 to 20 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from oven and brush with the melted butter and serve.
In 1960, Lonnie King, Julian Bond, Herschelle Sullivan, Carolyn Long, Joseph Pierce, and others Black students from the Atlanta University Center (AUC) organized what they called the Committee on Appeal for Human Rights (COAHR). They recruited students, trained them in non-violence strategy, and then moved on several segregated Atlanta lunch counters in protest including Rich’s a flagship department store in downtown Atlanta. Atlanta officials arrested them and while they remained in jail their parents gathered at Paschal’s restaurant. We “would keep the restaurant open all night because their families would come to Paschal's to wait until they had been released from jail,” remembers one of the Paschal brothers who owned the business. Thus when they made bail, the members of the COAHR went straight to Paschal’s where the restaurant owners feed them and their families for free. Congressman John Lewis, from Atlanta, a former member of SNCC, recalls that when the food was not free at Paschal’s during the sit-in movements, you could still get a plate of fried chicken, a wedge of corn bread, candied yams, and some greens for the price of a poor man’s feast--a dollar and some change.
Paschal’s Restaurant in South West Atlanta played an important role during the civil rights movement providing a meeting place for Martin Luther King (MLK), who their vegetable soup, and other movement strategist. Furthermore, like Georgia Gilmore business in Montgomery, Paschal’s in Atlanta literally feed the rank file of the civil rights revolution and its leaders with sensational soul food. According to Marcellas C. D. Barksdale, who attended Morehouse in the early 1960s, Paschal’s was no dump. To the contrary, it was a white-tablecloth restaurant for middle and upper class African Americans in Atlanta. He argues that it was the “number-one so-called classy restaurant” for African-American professionals. During segregation it remained the first choice for a Sunday meal for “Doctor and Mrs. so and so.” In addition, well-to-do Morehouse students would also take their “public girlfriends” to Pascal’s for Sunday dinner, says Barksdale. You could get full course, great-tasting meals for two people for five dollars. In addition to formal dining, Pascal’s also had a lunch counter and grill where you could also order fried chicken, collards and corn bread in a casual setting. Below is my corn bread recipe. Paschal's moved to new location not far from it's old space and it's been given a very upscale makeover. Really nice that I have been to and the tradition of good soul food continues. I talk about Paschal's in my book Hog and Hominy: Soul Food From Africa to America http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-14638-8/hog-and-hominy/excerpt.
Sweet corn bread recipe:
3/4 self-rising cornmeal
1 cup Spelt flour (it’s better tasting and healthier than white or wheat flour)
1/2 cup cane sugar
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup vanilla soymilk, (a fortified soy milk is a very good tasting healthy choice, I suggest the Vitasoy brand for newbies)
1 egg or egg substitute (beaten)
2 tbsp canola oil
2 tbsp butter (Try I Can’t Believe It’s not Butter available at most supermarkets and Costco)
Directions:
Preheat oven to 400; Combine dry ingredients. Add milk, egg and oil. Mix well. Spray a large cast iron skillet like the one in the photo or a 9 inch pie pan with Pam. Bake until tooth pick inserted in center comes out clean (about 25 minutes). Melt butter and brush over the top of the bread when it comes fresh out the oven; serves 8.
Photo of classic southern macaroni and cheese (mac and cheese). Recipes below.
After the success of Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) and the end of the Jim Crow laws on buses in Montgomery, Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) returned to Atlanta. There he organized the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and he served as the associated pastor of his father’s church. Paschal’s served as a popular meeting place for black activists and politicians. MLK and his SCLC lieutenants, Maynard Jackson, and Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee’s (SNCC) Julian Bond, who all attended Morehouse, held strategy meetings for the Selma to Montgomery march over Paschal’s famed fried chicken along with collard greens, corn bread, mac and cheese and sweet potato pie. Brothers James and Robert Paschal first opened a lunch counter sandwich shop on Hunter Street in Atlanta in 1947. Overtime the brothers moved to a location adjacent to the AUC and expanded their business to include a motel, a night club on the famous Chitin Circuit, and a white table cloth restaurant. More on Paschal’s tomorrow. In the spirit of Paschal’s I share several mac and cheese recipes:http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Southern-Macaroni-and-Cheese/MoreRecipesLikeThis.aspx
During the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, Georgia Gilmore, founder of the “The Club from Nowhere,” (TCN), fed members of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) who spent extra time walking to work and thus had little time for cooking. For slightly above cost MIA members could eat in or take a plate home of “meatloaf with cream potatoes, cheese and macaroni, rutabagas, peas with okra, lettuce and tomato, apple pie and iced tea,” recalls Gilmore. She and the TCN literally feed the MIA’s 1955 revolution. In addition, Gilmore’s makeshift restaurant served as a critical space where MIA leaders like King, E. D. Nixon, Ralph Abernathy, and others held strategy meeting. You see Gilmore’s place represented a place free of wire taps that provided white authorities with intelligence on the MIA. White folks knew better than to mess with Gilmore’s place. A large woman, perhaps 300 or more pounds, who moved quick on her feet, Gilmore once got in a fight with a local male white merchant who refused to refund her money after selling one of her children a stale loaf of bed. Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) viewed her and her restaurant has essential to the movement. When folks like Bobby Kennedy came to town, MLK would bring them to Gilmore’s for a great meal in a safe space. Here’s a traditional and vegan meat loaf recipe reminiscent of Gilmore’s down home cooking:
Let's continue the discussion I started earlier on MLK, “The Club from Nowhere,” (TCN) and the 1955 bus boycott. MLK served as the voice of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) and the women of the TCN baked the sweet potato pies and coconut layers cakes that provided the essential funds purchase cars, gas, and pay for the picket signs in support of the boycott. At the time of the offerings, the presidents of TCN clubs members on each side of the city would in a friendly competitive spirit announce at the regular mass meetings held at Holt Street Baptist Church how much their respective clubs earned and gave to the MIA leading to loud applauses, praise, and jubilation. TCN donations made from the sale of baked goods would vary from $125 to $200 dollars a week during the 385 day boycott. In addition, Georgia Gilmore, the Clubs founder, fed members of the MIA who spent extra time walking to work and thus had little time for cooking. We will pick that part of the story up tomorrow. Today’s recipe is for what I call a “black folk’s church cake,” a coconut layer cake. This is one of my favorite types of cakes and one I imagine in my mind that you could purchase a slice of from one of the women of the TCN.
Cake:
Pam
Wax paper
2 large eggs at room temperature or substitute
3large egg yolks at room temperature or substitute
½ cup buttermilk or substitute
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 ½ cups cake flour
1 1/3 cups sugar
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon sea salt
1 stick unsalted butter, softened or substitute
1/3 cup almond oil
Cake Method:
Cake: place oven shelf at the top of the lower third and preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray 9 x 2 round cake pan with Pam; shortening will work too. Note: mixing all the fat with the dry ingredients greases the proteins, which prevents the gluten formation and makes for a very tender cake. Mix eggs, yolks, buttermilk, and vanilla extract in a medium sized mixing bowl. Mix the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt with a cake mixer on low to moisten dry ingredients. Then increased speed to medium and mix for 1.5minutes. Next introduce the egg mix and beat for 20 minutes. Again until all of the egg mixture is incorporated. Pour into the cake pan and bake for about 35 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool in the pan for approximately 10 minutes. Loosen the sides then turn upside down onto wax paper and then a cooling rack; be sure the cake is cool before icing.
Icing:
1 ½ cups of sugar
16 ounces of sour cream or substitute
18 ounces flacked sweetened frozen coconut
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Icing Method:
30 minutes before icing the cake, stir together the sugar, sour cream, coconut, vanilla, keeping 3tablespoons coconut to garnish the cake. Refrigerate mix for 30 minutes. While the cake is still warm, cut horizontally into three layers. Using a tooth pick, poke holes approximately 1-inch apart until entire cake has been poked. Spread 1/3 of filling mixture on cake layer. Top with second layer, repeat process. Top with last layer and repeat process again. (As you stack layers together stick them with toothpicks to prevent cake from shifting). Garnish the entire cake with remaining coconut flakes. Refrigerate for about 2 hours before serving or over night for best results and serve cold.
Georgia Gilmore preparing one of here signature cakes in Montgomery, Alabama
After MLK graduated from Morehouse, he left the South from 1948 to 1953 to attend graduate school in Pennsylvania and Boston. By age 24, MLK earned a Master’s of divinity and doctorate degree. He then married Coretta Scott and moves to Montgomery, Alabama become Pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. In Montgomery King lived just three blocks from Georgia Gilmore a renowned cook in that city. When the bus boycott started in 1955, Gilmore testified in court in support of it and her employer, the National Lunch Company where she worked as a cook, fired her. MLK, who knew from personal experience that the women cook put her foot in it (that’s southern for really cook!), both encouraged her and gave her the capital necessary start a catering business and restaurant out of her home. Gilmore had both black and white customers and folks from all walks of life who came to love her fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, stuffed pork chops, stuffed peppers, and chitins with cole slaw. Anytime VIP’s came to town King would bring them to Gilmore’s restaurant for a batch of her Friday Chicken. In addition MLK would often retreat there to a get a good and safe home cooked meal. I will have more on MLK, Gilmore, food, and the Montgomery Bus Boycott tomorrow. Below are some fried chicken recipe for you:
Photo: 1948 MLK graduation from Morehouse photo taken with his sister Christine who graduated from Spelman the same year.
MLK attended Morehouse College in Atlanta, an all male Historical Black College (HBCU). My first academic post was at Morehouse where I was an assistant professor of history from 2000 to 2003. MLK enrolled at the house at age 15 in 1944 graduating with honors in 1948. Morehouse was part of the Atlanta University Center (AUC), located in Southwest Atlanta, and African-American community. AUC schools included the Interdenominational Theological Center, Atlanta University (now Clark-Atlanta University), Morris Brown College, Morehouse College, and Spelman College. I talk about HBCU cafeteria food in my book Hog and Hominyhttp://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-14638-8/hog-and-hominy/excerpt. Most HBCU students like King “were trying to go some place and get good food off campus. Because the food was just institutional,” remembers Spelman grad Stanlie M. James. The fact that HBCU cafeterias served one meal option that tasted “institutional,” translation—lacked soul, seemed the biggest complaint of students in the 1940s, 50s and 60s. James explains, “It was not like today where college cafeterias are operated like a food court with salad bars, pasta bars, and lots of options.” In the neighborhood surrounding the AUC complex there were notable black eateries like Pascal’s, and more humble holes-in-the-wall. I will talk about some of these places and MLK tomorrow.
Martin Luther King's (MLK) Birthday is right around the corner, so I have him on my mind. For me MLK, the black church, Atlanta, and Morehouse College are synonymous. Today let me start with food and the black church. MLK’s father was a prominent black preacher in Atlanta, and thanks to the Black Southern Baptist Convention, and nationally. As such MLK and his family most likely spent a lot of Sundays as the dinner gets of members of his father’s congregation. In most parts of the South, “every family was expected to feed the preacher at least once during the year” writes Joyce White. In addition to roast pork, rice with gravy, stewed tomatoes, corn, macaroni and cheese, corn bread, pies, and crowder peas with okra, White’s mother always served fried chicken when the congregation’s minister Reverend Barlow came to dinner.
Here’s a treat I recently concocted from Holiday leftovers that I have dubbed sweet potato biscuits. Over the holidays I had biscuits and sweet potato casserole; two foods that I really like. I also love sweet potato pie. So I took very flaky biscuits and split them into three and four sections to make crust like surfaces. I warmed my biscuit crust in the microwave then took the sweet potato pie casserole and spread it on top of this. I then reheat the sweet potato casserole on top of the biscuits slivers; the combination just melted in my mouth. I poured a little molasses on the plate so the crust would absorb it. The combo of molasses, sweet potatoes seasoned with nutmeg, cinnamon, vanilla extract, and butter just made my taste buds come alive. I washed it down with a cold glass of really vanilla soy milk. I highly recommend this combination; great stuff. Below find a recipe for sweet potato casserole and buttermilk biscuits which you could serve a side during any meal you choose then thereafter use with my sweet potato biscuit concoction.
Sweet potato casserole:http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-detail.asp?recipe=859591 Buttermilk Biscuit Recipe (makes about 10 biscuits)
Nonstick cooking spray
2 cups spelt flour 1/8 teaspoon baking soda to up the flour rise/ or use 2 cups self-rising flour
1/8 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon sea salt
¼ cup sugar
4 tablespoon vegetable shortening
2/3 cup heavy or whipping cream/half and half works too
1 cup buttermilk, or until dough is like cottage cheese
1 cup whole-wheat flour for shaping the wet dough into biscuits
2 tablespoons melted butter to brush over the baked biscuits
Preheat the oven to 425; spray cook sheet or cast iron skillet with non-stick spray; combine dry ingredients except for the 1 cup flour for shaping the dough; stir in buttermilk and cream and let stand for 2-3 minutes. Flour your hands and softly shape your biscuits. If you’re rushing, use an ice-cream scooper. Place the biscuits tightly against each other on wax paper so they will rise up instead of out. Sprinkle with flour then place then on the sprayed surface for baking. Bake for about 15 to 20 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from oven and brush with the melted butter and serve; great Thanksgiving Day hot bread.
Commuting to work with.a fold up bike is a great way to stay fit
The nutritionist and medical professionals that I interviewed for my book Hog and Hominy made many suggestions to help improve our health. I want to share some today which I have translated to make them relevant for the New Year. Remove the soda from your home and replace it with water, milk, or even better soy milk. As I have said before, you have to experiment with the many varieties of soy milk until you find one that you like. You can purchase soy milk with plain, vanilla, and or chocolate flavoring. It also comes sugar sweeten or un-sweetened. Thus like milk, not all soy milk is created equal. Let’s turn to exercise. We should try and walk and or ride a bike much more often. By doing so, we can both save money on gas and improve our health. Before the 1970s, most people walked just about everywhere. But now it seems like everybody drives and walking is an exception instead of the rule. Along that same point, why not purchase a new or second hand bike and install a basket or saddle bag to carry groceries, library books, or other items. I purchased a Brompton fold up bike which always me to computer to work via bike and train. I ride to the computer train not far from my home, fold up the bike, board train and I’m off to work. Which reminds me, if you are considering relocating, why not look for a house that’s in town so that you can walk and or ride a bike more frequently?
Photo of Malcolm X taking a picture of and Muhammad Ali at a luncheonette counter. They are examples of food rebels I talk about in the book Hog and Hominy
With the New Year here, folks are much more open about taking a critical look at what they eat. The final chapter of my book Hog and Hominy http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-14638-8/hog-and-hominy/webFeatures looks at several debates that developed over eating soul food during the 1960s and 1970s. Some African-American intellectuals like Amiri Baraka and Verta Mae Grosvenor argued that soul food was a unique part of black culture and therefore the intellectual capital of black folk. Euro-American food critics like Craig Claiborne insisted that soul food was a southern regional food that belonged to southerners. And three groups of African Americans I call “food rebels” argued that soul food is nothing to be celebrated or guarded as our own because it was killing black folk. In the final chapter of the book, I argue that black Muslims, advocates of natural-food diets, and college-and university-educated African Americans recipes and making them healthier; that’s why I offer both traditional and vegan recipes on my blog. Over the next couple of days I will discuss from the book ways you can eat and cook for maximum health this year.
In my book Hog and Hominy http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-14638-8/hog-and-hominy/excerpt, I talk about how in 1940s and 1950s New York City, Jazz enthusiast started eating fried chicken and waffles early on Sunday mornings after spending all night listening to bebop jazz musicians such as Miles Davis and Thelonius Monk. By the way check out Robin Kelley’s new biography of Monk—it’s a must read http://monkbook.com/. The legend goes that this northern soul food tradition began when artists in New York like Monk ordered chicken for breakfast after missing dinner on Saturday night because they were performing, and ordered waffles as hot bread to eat with the fried chicken. I learned at a book event that I did in New York City that rural white farm families in Pennsylvania Dutch Country have been eating a similar combination for years but made with smothered chicken with gravy. It makes since knowing that waffles culture here in North America started with Dutch immigrants. I argue that chicken and waffles is the perfect combo following a New Year’s Eve party in which you spent all night waiting for the ball to drop in Time Square or some other tradition that kept you up until the early morning today. Try making (or even better ordering) this early morning combo; I am sure you will be pleased and we can start a New Year's Day breakfast tradition.
Restaurants Known for Chicken and Waffles : Roscoe's House of Chicken and Waffles, Los Angeles
The Corner Office Restaurant and Martini Bar, Denver
Lolo's Chicken and Waffles, Phoenix, Arizona
Gladys Knight and Ron Winans' Chicken & Waffles, of a chain with restaurants in Atlanta, Georgia, Lithonia, Georgia, Johns Creek, Georgia and Landover, Maryland near DC in The Boulevard at the Capital Centre
The Book’s grassroots approach to foodways reveals the global origins of food traditions, the forces that shape food traditions, and the distinctive cultural collaborations that have occurred among Africans, Asians, Europeans, and Americans throughout history. Hog and Hominy shows how food can be an indicator of social position, a site of community building, and cultural identity.
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 is the author of Hog and Hominy: Soul Food from Africa to America, Black Labor Migration in Caribbean Guatemala, 1882-1923, and the forthcoming book Black and Latino Coalitions in New York 1959 to 1989. He has appeared in the NYC cable TV series Appetite City hosted by former New York Times food critic William Grimes,the History Channel's "101 Fast Foods That Have Changed the World," and Film Maker Byron Hurt's documentary Soul Food Junkie. Opie is the Sheila Biddle Ford Foundation Fellow at The W. E. B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard University and Professor of History and Foodways at Babson College
