Amplifying Silenced Taste Buds: The Contributions of Black People to American Cooking
It’s no secret that soul food and other styles of southern cooking were influenced-- no, invented-- by Black people, who despite centuries of oppression and cultural silencing were able to establish countless genres of music, fashion, and the food we might find “mainstream” in the U.S. today. But while everyone seems to be an expert on the existence of this group’s impact on American culture as we know it, little is known about the complex history surrounding Black-owned businesses or the significance food holds not only in the preservation of their roots but as a staple of hope and liberation.
When it comes to music, we can dig up artist records. When it comes to fashion, we can sleuth through photographs. When it comes to food, the trail stops. *Poof* It’s as though White America seriously wanted us to believe that what was concocted deliciously in the south was the result of a simple blending of European cuisine with an African flare, as though it was merely a couple slaves getting together by the fire and throwing together a hearty stew some White man came along to “discover.”
Spoiler alert: that’s not what went down.
For starters, many foods you might find growing in your own gardens that serve as key ingredients for dishes we know as American cuisine came straight from Africa.
Okra, yam, black-eyed peas, watermelon, peppers, rice pudding, sesame seeds, peanuts, coffee, jambalaya, kola nuts (which gave us Coca-Cola, a drink that for much of US history symbolized liberty and patriotism). The list goes on, and many of these foods were brought over in a grim context: survival. For instance, Africans used kola nuts to freshen up the water they were given on slave ships as they were traded globally. They were fed black-eyed peas by traders, who brought them from Africa as a cheap way to feed their captees aboard. Okra is more of a silver lining. Cultivated in the South, where the climate is more similar to its native terrain, the crop not only served as sustenance but also as a symbol for the survival and persistence of the African people uprooted from their homeland and fighting to stay alive.
And yet, so little is known. So little is even understood about the journey even African ingredients have had after their arrival in the Americas, let alone the people who got creative with them. For the most part, Black people have been silenced even for their own food, which quickly became associated with American cuisine. It was especially during the 1960s and 1970s that Black-owned restaurants offering soul food popped up all over the country. Soon, you didn’t have to have grown up in the Bible Belt to know of Hoppin’ John, Jambalaya, or sweet cornbread (and love it). Even before then, though, the presence of Black cooking in the North was felt, though often disregarded. In an interview with Eater, chef, and educator Therese Nelson, a Black woman passionate about her roots, stated that culinary schools neglect African influence on American and European cuisine. In fact, it is silenced.
Emeline Jones, for example, was a slave who was at one point rather widely acclaimed for her elaborate cooking, and she even gained the notice of multiple presidents and politicians of her day. Once emancipated, she moved to New York to work as a private cook for entrepreneur John Chamberlain, who later hired her to supply cuisines for his famous Carlton Club. Over the course of her life, she contributed fabulous recipes that gained national popularity and were even interviewed by reporters in the North about them. Nevertheless, much of her career is actually lost in history, and what is currently known about her life as a chef is only recovered by historians by excessive digging through public records.
Another prominent chef known to have had a national impact on our taste buds was Hercules Posey, a slave of President George Washington. It was said by the Washingtons that his cooking was so immaculate, it was of the culinary artiste as advanced as could be found in the United States. While Washington allowed Hercules to make extra funds by his cooking at different points in his bondage, the president did not allow his freedom-- even though he resided in a state where emancipation was legal. Washington would rotate his slaves in and out of Pennsylvania so they could not gain freedom through a six-month continuous residency, and it was regarded as an unpleasant surprise when the chef escaped to New York City, where he lived the rest of his life in hiding. His contribution to popularizing Black-influenced American cuisine among the elites remains rather quiet-kept to this day, despite his impressive skills.
The growth of “soul food” is reclamation.
Even after the Great Migration in the earlier part of the 20th century, many Black people retained the cooking style and came to associate it with home and family left behind in the South as they journeyed to the urbanized North. The term soul food came to wider adoption in the 60s and 70s during the Black Power Movement, which aimed to establish it as a part of the Black identity due to its history; and Black-owned soul food restaurants embodied this, largely serving as safe spaces for members of the Black community.
Even given this context, the food was still widely regarded as merely ‘Southern’ cooking. Food scholar and award-winning author Adrian Miller remarked in an interview with HuffPost that Black people weren’t seen as creators of this style of cooking, but its guardians. It was at this point that a distinction between “Soul” and “Southern” food became more present, more confusing, and more exclusive. From cookbooks to TV interviews, the cuisine was largely represented by white people, who gained fame for it without even acknowledging the impact Black people had on its ingredients or style.
When this happens, an entire community of people is being left out of a narrative that they, themselves, essentially created. People see the genres as exclusive of one another, with White Southerners being the more visible contributors.
In more recent years, the issue of appropriation and access has come into question as upscale eateries increasingly try to smack high price tags on traditionally low-cost items created and popularized by working-class people. The gentrification of Black communities has contributed to the decline of soul food, as Black-owned restaurants are pushed out and newer, wealthier, Whiter restaurants move in… often hoping to maintain the elements that once made the community special, while selling it at a cost the original community itself probably couldn’t have even afforded.
Today, countless Black creators are left out of our textbooks, but their contributions are here and visible. If you want to support the Black community and uplift the preservation of their culture, consider supporting their businesses.
written by Victoria Diaz-Torres
