Southern foodways has claimed its roots from African-American women.  “Many plantation mistresses and white southern housewives likely followed the instruction of black women in southern kitchens…such lessons culminated in the recipes that serve as a foundation for southern cooking today” (Latshaw 123).  Although there are European and Native American influences found in southern food many of the ingredients and cooking techniques are traced to West Africa (Beoku-Betts 547).  Crops such as yams, cassava, watermelon, rice, black-eyed peas, and okra began appearing with the slave trade that started in 1619.  In just over one decade, 1773-1785, thousands of Africans were brought to the southern states to work as slave labor, bringing with them crops and cooking methods from their homeland (Parham 1-2).  West African cuisine utilized smoked meat and fish as a seasoning. Garlic, onions, salt, and pepper were also heavily used in West African cooking.  The use of these types of seasonings is definitive of southern cooking today and is obvious in dishes such as collards that are cooked with ham hocks (Beoku-Betts 547).  The complex identity created by southern foodways in African-American culture has been shaped along a difficult road.  Food has been used by white southerners to instigate propaganda, however, southern food plays an intricate role in resistance against racial inequalities and cultural pride has resulted in the formation of what is known as soul food.

The Market For Chicken

     In the 17^th and 18^th centuries a series of laws and ordinances were passed in the south to limit profits that could be made by the bartering and trading ventures of freed and enslaved African-Americans.   These laws were aimed at squelching door to door sales of several popular food items such as cheese, butter, eggs, fish, and chicken.  “Yet, despite these laws and ordinance, Black monopoly over the sale and trade of poultry increased and continued to cause numerous problems for customer and planter alike”(Inness 174).  The white patriarchy changed their tactics from claiming these foods were unsafe, because they could not be traced, to accusations of theft toward African-Americans.  Enslaved and free people were practicing forestalling, which is the pre-selling and purchasing of goods outside the market to increase profits, and were also trading off the plantation to increase profits.  These practices were economically threatening to the white planter.  Due to the threat of African-American revenues, propaganda and stereotypes were created in the Reconstruction era to deflate these gains.  Furthermore, whites were intimidated by newly freed slaves and the mass migration of African-Americans out of the south left a labor vacuum and resulted in an angry “White backlash”(Inness 175).  Cards, pamphlets, brochures, and even food items became vehicles for southern whites to portray inferiority and create racist stereotypes.  In George Lipsitz essay on "The Possessive Investment in Whiteness" he was able to sum up this historical narrative by stating "Race is a cultural construct, but one with sinister structural causes and consequences"(Lipsitz 371).  These stereotypes are seen in the “zip coon” character and in the following picture (Inness 175).   

This picture can be found (Inness 180) . 

Foods Used for Resistance

     “It was the custom for slave owners in Delaware and nearby states to allow slaves to have a day of freedom to worship or do as they pleased” (Kurlansky 134).  Quarterlies were a religious event and also served as a reunion for families that had been divided from the effects of the institution of slavery.  Although Delaware is located just outside the peripheral south, the article about the Big Delaware Quarterly was included in the southern section of Mark Kurlansky’s compilation of WPA files.  It seems the reasoning behind this falls not only on the overwhelming presence of southern food, the massive amount of African-Americans who traveled from the south to attend, but also on the basis that the Big Quarterly was “an entrance to the Underground Railroad, often with the help of father Spencer and Thomas Garrett” (Willard 160).  The event grew over the years and took over the streets of downtown Wilmington.  In later years, Quarterlies became seen as a “stronghold of the black power movement” and there were riots in Wilmington following the assassination of Martin Luther King.  Members of the African-American community were torn about reinstating the Quarterly celebration in 1976 because the cultural significance was lost upon the youth and the community had to restructure the event.  “A big part of the August Quarterly today is getting people to know its history, to have them understand that they are part of something bigger.”(Willard 162). 

In this video :  Lewis Jordan and the Tympany Five sing a song that details an ensuing fight between beans and cornbread.  After tensions rise above the boiling point violence breaks out in the form of a street fight where beans "knocks cornbread out of sight".  The song ends on a positive note where beans and cornbread resolve to settle their differences.  Many food parings that have roots in European cultures are also mentioned to call for a resistance toward hate and intolerance.         

Beans and Cornbread Lyrics

Soul Food

 Soul food is also known as African-American heritage cooking.  Soul food gained extreme popularity with the momentum of the civil rights movement that started in 1965.  Soul food is not limited to, but includes fried chicken, chitterlings, black-eyed peas, okra, cornbread, and collards that are prepared with ham hocks (Parham 4).  In the kitchen, expression and creativity were not only accepted they were encouraged and “perhaps by honoring and celebrating this heritage, (African-Americans) might be so much more likely to think southern food is important”(Latshaw 124).  The rituals surrounding food preparation and consumption fortified a unique cultural identity that was not directly subject to management from oppressors (Beoku-Betts 536).  Many southern foods are attached to the African-American identity as a reflection of survival, ingenuity, and a distinction of a cultural hybridity.  “All soul food is Southern, not all Southern food is soul” (Latshaw 109).  The distinction is that the “soul” aspect of the African-American foodway is inherent to the people who cook and eat the food and is not found in the ingredients alone.            

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