Hope didn’t change.
Slavery had been transformed into sharecropping.
The white supremacist organizations that had been formed at the end of the Civil War grew.
Xavier Roache
Between 1889 and 1932, the United States recorded 3,700 lynchings of Blacks.
The South held little for them: it was time to leave.
By 1925, one-tenth of the Black population of the country had moved north.
They headed toward metropolises where there were jobs in the factories created by increasing industrialization.
Breakfasts offered creamy grits and sausage patties with biscuits to drown in syrup.
The collard greens that she grew were left until the first frost and then seasoned with smoked pork.
Her food was that of the hardscrabble rural South.
She was my Edna Lewis before I knew of Edna Lewis.
Each grandmother provided me with a clear Southern culinary roadmap.
New Year’s Day meant a trip to the store for black-eyed peas and collard greens.
Grandma Jones' roast pork complete with crackling is the centerpiece of the meal.
My New Year’s offerings are simply one demonstration of the tenacity of African American culinary traditions.
Get Jessica B. Harris’s recipe forBlack-Eyed Peas with Slab Bacon.
Xavier Roache
Pictured recipes: Monticello’s Macaroni; Black-Eyed Peas with Slab Bacon; Roberta Solomon’s Barbecue Sauce; Creole Skillet Cornbread and Sweet Potato Dutch Baby.Jerrelle Guy
