The 1965 rebellion against police brutality in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles is closely connected with the genesis of Kwanzaa, a festival celebrating the African American culture.
Last year during winter break, at the Reston public library in Virginia, I came across a book of recipes and stories by Maya Angelou, Hallelujah! The Welcome Table, that I couldn’t stop reading. I just got my own copy and went through it again. In it, she writes about how her grandmother, her Moma, Ms. Annie Henderson, supported her young father and physically-handicapped uncle as a single woman, in the turn of the twentieth century, Stamps, Arkansas by making and selling Fried Meat Pies.
Earlier this summer, I came across, A Date With A Dish, by Freda DeKnight (video footage at 6:37), a book published in 1948 based on more than a thousand African American recipes collected over a twenty year period by the author from all over the country. About the people behind these recipes, the author writes in her preface, “...they just seem to have a “way” of taking a plain, ordinary, everyday dish and improvising it into a creation that is a gourmet’s delight. Whether acquired or inherent this love for food has given them the desire to make their dishes different, well-seasoned and eye-appealing”. One of these recipes that stood out to me, for The Soft Molasses Cake, was attributed to Ms. Jennie Goodman Jeter’s family in Birmingham, Alabama. The author says, “Jennie Goodman Jeter thinks there is so much in the future of culinary arts that she has devoted her career to it as a teacher of cooking in the public schools of Philadelphia”. I made the recipe for the cake exactly as described and I am glad that I did.
In her recent book, Jubilee: Two Centuries of African American Cooking, Toni-Tipton Martin writes about a drink made with dried hibiscus flowers that she describes as a celebratory Christmas drink in Jamaica. After helping to make the drink and taste it and being enthralled by its deep crimson hues, my six-year old declared that it was such a delightfully democratic drink for her to have when the adults had wine. I too found a new drink.
Historian, Jessica Harris in her book, High on The Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America, says about the final day of Kwanzaa, “...designed to celebrate African American communities past and present by honoring African American elders and community leaders as well as African American ancestors. The day is traditionally capped by a communal meal with people bringing dishes created from family recipes or foods from around the African diaspora.”