A Juneteenth Conversation: The Past and Future of Black American Food

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, SENIOR GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, we turn now to another celebration of African-American culture. This time through food. Bryant Terry is an award-winning vegan chef and author of six books, including “Black Food: Stories, Art, and Recipes from Across the African Diaspora.” In honor of Juneteenth, he joins Michel Martin to discuss the evolution of his ancestor’s cuisine through the lens of migration, identity, and resilience.

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MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks, Bianna. Bryant Terry, thank you so much for joining us.

BRYANT TERRY, JAMES BEARD AWARD-WINNING CHEF AND AUTHOR, “BLACK FOOD”: Thank you so much for having me on, Michel. It’s great to see you again.

MARTIN: It’s great to see you. You are an award-winning chef, author, cookbook author, you know, activist. And one of your signatures is to kind of connect the food, not just with health and with enjoyment, but with the culture. Juneteenth celebrates the end of slavery and more broadly, kind of African- American resilience and resistance. How do you think food fits into that?

B. TERRY: Yes, that’s a great question. So, as you mentioned, we know that Juneteenth commemorates the ending of slavery in the United States, and it has a specific geographic context in Texas, but it’s moved beyond there. And since it’s a national holiday now it has evolved into a day of reflection, celebration, and education about black history and culture. And, you know, because of the work that I do around health, food, and farming issues, and because I just love to eat, I’m always thinking about different cultural holidays. Our cultural holidays through the lens of food. And we know that food has always played a central role in cultural expression, community building, and survival in the black community. We can go back to the civil rights movement. We think about, you know, so many of the restaurants and home cooks who supported black activists. In fact, so many of the — so much of the strategizing and organizing happen in home kitchens. We think about someone like Fannie Lou Hamer, who, you know, we often associate with electoral politics and a lot of people aren’t aware that Fannie Lou Hamer started the Freedom Farm in Mississippi, which had over 600 acres of land. They had affordable housing, acres and acres of farmland and educational workshops to empower the community. You know, but I want to just mention one of my biggest inspirations, and that was the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, colloquially known as the Black Panthers. And, you know, while the popular media often paints them as kind of angry militants, they had a number of meaningful and powerful programs that were aimed at meeting the basic needs and communities. And a number of them looked at health, specifically food, their grocery giveaways and their free breakfast for children program in which they were feeding children, hot, nourishing breakfasts every single morning. And so, you know, when I think about this — all these things that predates the type of activism that I currently do around these issues, it only makes sense that, you know, we think about Juneteenth and just all the connections with the kind of transfer of ingredients from the African continent to the new world as well as cooking techniques. So, I use it as a time to celebrate food.

MARTIN: You know, people often think of African-American cuisine or traditional African-American cuisine as slave food, right? What was created from the remnants, the leftover, the least desirable portions, as it were. You really — talk about resistance, you really resist that narrative. You want to say more about that? Why you think that that’s not really quite right and why you push hard against that?

B. TERRY: Well, I think in general, in the popular imagination, there are these very reductive ways that we think about black food, specifically food in, you know, the United States. And so, as you mentioned, there are kind of these two strains that I’ve seen people talk about. They even talk about the antebellum survival food, upon which many enslaved Africans relied. And, you know, people often talk disparagingly about that food. You know, I’ve heard it referred to a slave food. And as you mentioned, there are — this kind of history of often plantation owners giving enslaved Africans, the worst parts of the animals, the animal viscera, or the discarded parts of the vegetable. And one, you know, let’s not mention the fact that there were free black people, every Black person in the United States, a person of African descent, wasn’t enslaved. But the other thing is that the institution of slavery wasn’t a monolith. So, maybe in the Deep South, the Black Belt it was more of a paternalistic system in which every need of enslaved Africans was provided by plantation owners. But it — you know, the institution of slavery looked different the way that enslaved Africans might grow food, cook it, and eat it in the Coastal Carolinas, look different than it did in Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee, and that look different than it did in Louisiana, and that looked different than it did in Bahia, Brazil. And so, to reduce it to just slave foods, you know, erases this history of enslaved Africans, maybe having a garden in which they could grow their own food for their families or having a day off where they can hunt for protein. But the other strand that I see are the kind of big flavored meats that we might find in a soul food restaurant or the, you know, sugary desserts or overcooked vegetables. And here’s the thing. I’m not denying any of those things. Chitlins and pig’s feet and red velvet cake and macaroni and cheese, all these things are part of this very diverse cuisine that we have. But when I think about the type of food that my grandfather and his parents and, you know, so many of our ancestors, they were growing and eating things like nutrient rich collards, mustards, turnips, kale, dandelions, sugar snap peas, pole beans, sweet potatoes, black eyed peas. These are the type of foods, Michel, as you know, that any Western trained physician or, you know, dietitian or nutritionist would say we should all eat. And so, I simply want to uplift and highlight those nutrient rich, healthful foods that are part of our tradition so that we have a more holistic understanding of the type of foods that we’ve grown and eaten historically.

MARTIN: How did it start for you?

B. TERRY: Well, I can tell you about the period when I — you know, there is a stereotype, Michel. I’m sure you’ve kind of heard or seen the stereotype of the self-righteous, dogmatic, judgmental vegans, right? The people that are wagging their finger at you because you’re not eating a vegan diet, even though they just converted to veganism like the week before. So, that was me in high school. And, you know, one of the powerful things that really helped transform my habits and attitudes and politics regarding food was a hip hop song. The song “Beef” by the hip hop group Boogie Down Productions, one of the seminal hip hop groups.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Beef, what a relief. When will this poisonous product cease? This is another public service announcement. You can believe it, or you can doubt it. Let us begin now with the power —

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B. TERRY: It just really blew me away and just transformed everything for me because they were talking about factory farming. I had no idea that animals in our industrialized food system had to endure so much violence. And as a young person, you know, it had such an impact on me. And you know, the thing is, I always talk about just that kind of like abrasive period that I went through, and I think it’s just natural for a young person to have a shift in worldview and to feel very zealous about, you know, trying to change the world. But once again, you know, what I’ve seen is that rather than proselytizing, the most powerful way that I’ve engaged people is by doing practical things, teaching people cooking skills, writing cookbooks, providing people with delicious food. And then, that is such a powerful way to kind of transform people’s hearts, minds, and spirits.

MARTIN: What made you become a chef?

B. TERRY: It was really the politics of food that moved me towards, you know, just going to culinary school and thinking about using food as a kind of transformative tool. And it started when I was a doctoral student in history at NYU, when I was doing research on the Black Panthers. They were, you know, doing all these programs around health, like addressing medical apartheid and doing — testing for sickle cell anemia. But the one that transformed me the most was their free breakfast for children program This was started in 1969 in January of that year. And by the end of the year, it had spread to every major city that had a Black Panther chapter, and they were feeding over 10,000 children every single day. And I just remember this kind of, like, moment of clarity. I was on the subway one morning going to the village to teach a class and I saw these kids on the subway eating red hot Cheetos and candy bars and sugary donuts and they were drinking sodas and energy drinks. And I realized that these kids, as my mentor, Raj Patel would say, they’re being stuffed and starved. They’re eating a lot, but they’re empty calories. And I realized that the type of — the spirit of the activism back in the ’60s and the ’70s, we needed it now. And so, I want it to be a food justice activist to make an intervention. But I didn’t want to just, you know, be in the realm of like ideas and politics. I wanted to do something that felt practical, that felt immediate, that felt like it was giving young people skills. And so, I started an organization be healthy that use cooking as a way to wake up these young people to the realities of our food system, but also give them the skills so that when they were adults, they would actually be able to make meals from themselves, go shopping, prepare the food, and then, you know, really have this kind of sustenance-based approach to taking care of their — themselves and their families.

MARTIN: Have you seen a change over the time that since you’ve been working as a chef and also as a cookbook author? Have you seen a change? I know, like, thinking about, like, one of your first books, “Afro-Vegan,” you know, a lot of people, I think, might have been surprised that somebody like you even exists.

B. TERRY: That book was published a decade ago. We just celebrated the 10- year anniversary. And it’s been so encouraging, I have to say, to see so many people who are, I’ll say, open to eating more plant-based foods, even people who aren’t necessarily trying to embrace a full-on vegan or plant- based diet. What I’ve seen are people are open to doing meatless Mondays, or people are open to doing, you know, one meal a day that has, you know, a vegan meal and no animal products. And what that says to me is that more people understand the — I mean, look, the data is out. We know that having a more plant centered diet, it’s more nutrient dense, it tends to be more helpful and people just feel lighter. And that’s — you know, Michel, you’ve seen me on this journey for a decade. And I just want to say that that has been my approach. You can start with the heady intellectual ideas or the politics, but a lot of times when you start there, people run away. But my approach has been starting with the food, because I think a lot of people have these negative perceptions of what plant-based cuisine is. And what I’ve seen is when you serve people delicious food, that’s devoid of animal products, they’re often surprised and it makes them more open to eating this type of food. I will say that one thing that has been a little frustrating to me is that it seems that a lot of people feel like, you know, spending their dollars in alignment with their values is enough. You know, if I just go to the big corporate market and I buy all this, you know, vegan and organic food, then I’m doing my job. And I think that is important to spend our dollars in alignment with our values. But I also think that we need to think about the larger structural reasons that many communities don’t have access to healthy, fresh food. They don’t have access to supermarkets. So, I always encourage people to think about, well, how can you get involved with your community to ensure that everyone has a human right to healthy, fresh, affordable, and, you know, plant centered food?

MARTIN: Do you feel like you’re making headway?

B. TERRY: Oh, for sure. You know the thing that lets me know that I’m making headway is this generation of young cookbook authors and chefs and food justice activists who are in the streets doing it big. I turn 50 this year. So, I’m an old man now. And just as I’m standing on the shoulders of so many of my ancestors who come before me, whether it’s Fannie Lou Hamer, or, you know, activists like Dick Gregory, or the, you know, MC Cara (ph) is one, Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor, the anthropologist and cookbook writer. I hope that many of this younger generation see themselves standing on my shoulders. And I, you know, imagine that they’re going to take this so much further than I could ever imagine. So, I’m hopeful. I’m so hopeful.

MARTIN: One of your latest books, your 2021 book called “Black Food: Stories, Art, and Recipes from Across the African Diaspora” won a bunch of awards. It was hailed as one of the most critically acclaimed American cookbooks that year. Are there one or two stories or essays that really stands out to you or recipes for that matter that really stands out to you?

B. TERRY: We put that book together in nine months. And we started working on it in 2020 when the — U.S. was kind of reckoning with the ways in which we’ve treated African-Americans historically and contemporaneously. I knew that I saw an anthology like black food that brought together scholars and chefs and artists and activists from around the globe as something that I do later in my career. But in that moment, I realized that there was a sense of urgency to do it then because it was revealed there was a lot of racism within the publishing industry. And, you know, there was a lot of highlighting of the ways in which, you know, authors of color and black authors were having a harder time getting their work published. And so, I just felt like this was the moment and I reached out to friends around the globe to be a part of this book and I couldn’t be more proud. My favorite aspect of the book is the artwork. Every chapter starts with a piece of art that I got permission or either had artists kind of create our original piece that really encapsulated the ideas and the content within. And, you know, I just — as an educator, I’m always thinking about the multiple ways that people learn. Some people who’ve been formally educated there, they can dig deeply into, you know, a heady intellectual essay, but then some people might be more moved by an image that really just speaks to, you know, these issues that we’re covering. Some people might be moved by the poetry in the book. Others are just going to see it as a book that they use in their kitchen. So, when I wrote the book or when I conceived of it, I said, I want this to book — be a book that moved from one’s kitchen to their nightstand, to their coffee table. And the response has been so tremendous. And you know, here we are, what, three years later after book is being published, and we’re still talking about it, and I hope that we’re still talking about it 30 years from now.

MARTIN: OK. Well, for the moment though, some people do want those recipes. So, while people are planning their Juneteenth get togethers, what do you recommend? Any recommendations?

B. TERRY: Oh, my gosh. My favorite recipe in the book, forks down, is this blueberry vegan cheesecake by this brilliant pastry chef, Malcolm Livingston. And to be clear, this recipe — this cookbook has, you know, dozens of recipes, but they aren’t all vegan. And it was a decision I had to make as an editor to really give the contributors a space to, you know, write or contribute the recipe that made sense for them or told their family’s story. I love Nicole Taylor, a good friend of mine who actually has a book about Juneteenth that’s brilliant, “Watermelon and Red Birds.” She does this cocoa baked fish recipe and people would think cocoa and fish, but it’s absolutely brilliant and scrumptious. There are a lot of good, you know, drink recipes, Toni Tipton-Martin, the cookbook author and editor does a recipe. I think it’s a whiskey sour. So, there’s just so many great recipes in there. And you know, I think in terms of menu planning for Juneteenth or otherwise, this is a powerful resource.

MARTIN: This will help you out. All right. Before we let you go, I have to put you on the spot. What is your celebration food? What is your kind of go-to for a get together day like Juneteenth?

B. TERRY: If I have to make a dish, if it’s just like one thing that’s emblematic of my love, it’s Hoppin’ John. Black-eyed peas, rice, that, you know, rich tomato sauce. That’s hands down my favorite dish today.

MARTIN: That’s got to be there.

B. TERRY: Yes.

MARTIN: All right. Bryant Terry, thank you so much for talking with us and happy Juneteenth.

B. TERRY: Happy Juneteenth. Thank you so much, Michel.