How Southern Food empowered the Civil Rights Movement

 

Frederick Douglass Opie

Movements for progressive change have always been sustained by the ideologies and strategies of the leaders and organizations pushing for said change.

When it comes to the Civil Rights Movement, one of the most powerful tools of its sustenance was, simply put, sustenance for the body.

In Southern Food and Civil Rights: Feeding the Revolution (American Palate, Charleston, SC, 2017), Frederick Douglass Opie shows how food was significant in nourishing the participants who marched, protested and strategized against injustice in the South. A professor of history and foodways at Babson College in Wellesley, MA, Opie has also authored Hog and Horminy: Soul Food From Africa to America (2008) and Zora Neale Hurston on Florida Food, Recipes, Remedies and Simple Pleasures (2015).

This extraordinary book details how restaurants such as Paschal's in Atlanta and Dookie Chase's in New Orleans offered a safe haven for the revolutionaries; how the Sandwich Brigade fed thousands of people attending the 1963 March on Washington; and how the Nation of Islam supported itself via the farming of crops and livestock, distribution of the food from these farms, and ownership of eateries in Washington, Chicago, Harlem, and Atlanta

The book is highlighted by numerous recipes modified from those that appeared in black and mainstream publications from the early 20th century up through the Civil Rights era:
Chicken Gumbo (Cleveland Call & Post, May 1950); Afro Cooking School Cheesecake (Afro American, November 19, 1932); Basic Fried Chicken (Baltimore Sun, Jan. 29, 1960); and Bean Pie (Chicago Defender).

During my interview with Opie, he used the Boston Marathon as one example of how food is a key component and ingredient in an event. The marathon would be nothing, he said without volunteers on the sidelines of the raceway handing out water or Gatorade to the runners. It was the same with the Civil Rights Movement — it would not have been sustainable had there been no one to provide food for participants during the marches and rallies.

Opie's upbringing influenced his authorship of the book; his mother was an activist, he said.

"I saw all her in all of the planning, strategy sessions .... and there was always food there. My mother would be on the phone coordinating with other activists," making sure these meetings were also potluck meals, he said.

People exhibit a sense of superiority when they think they have everything under control, Opie noted. That was the case with racist whites during the Civil Rights Movement. Because of their arrogance, they assumed Blacks would remain powerless and never outsmart them — in other words, they thought that "everything was on lockdown," he said.

Meanwhile, Blacks used their stores and restaurants as covers for movement activities. They would carry around pamphlets and fliers, surreptitiously dropping them others who were involved in the movement. The success of the 1955-1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott in Alabama was helped by bake sales, some of whose products were sold to whites who had no idea where the proceeds were going.

Tucked into the theme of food during the movement was the the sense of self-sufficiency that helped sustain the supply of food that sustained the movement. Opie pointed out that the Nation of Islam, for instance, believed in "never begging the white man for something," as Malcolm X would say. Some Black people forget that the Nation of Islam was similar to the Marcus Garvey movement, Opie added.

"The thing about Marcus Garvey that people cannot forget was, he was a cultural revolutionary. Booker T. Washington was his role model. He said Washington said, 'Don't ask the white man for nothing; build your own. ... When you are economically independent, you can do things like that." The Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), which oversaw the bus boycott, was perhaps influenced by the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), Garvey's organization. "If you do your research, there may have been a UNIA chapter in Montgomery. Garvey went universal," he said.

Opie acknowledged that integration proved a double-edged sword. Blacks from all walks of life,  suffering the same oppression as a group, had no choice but to work together during the days of Jim Crow. But "when you had integration, [Blacks] left the community, he said. "You no longer had role models left in the community ... and this was an important factor," Opie added. "Today, I think we in the African American community forgot the lessons of the Civil Rights Movement."

Opie said his next book, that's still in the works, will be titled The Student Makeover. In it, he plans to discuss how college-bound young people should be able to answer the questions,
'What is your God-given talent? What can you do better than anybody else?'

"If you can't ask that question first, you don't know where you are going."