| Past Feature Red, Black & Greens: The Politics of Soul Food in the 1960s January 2004 Birth of a Cuisine “Hoppin' John (black-eyed peas and rice); hushpuppies (crusty corn meal bread cooked in fish grease and best with fried fish, especially fried salt fish, which ought to soak overnight unless you're over 50 and can't take all that salt); hoecake (pan cake); buttermilk biscuits and pancakes; fatback, i.e., streak'alean-streak'afat; dumplings; neck bones; knuckles, both good for seasoning lima or string beans; okra; pork chops; grits, eggs and sausage; pancakes with Alaga syrup; a chicken wing on a piece of greasy bread; a piece of barbecue hot enough to make you whistle; and small sweet potato pies.” The notion of soul food as an African American cuisine emerged in the 1960s.The lively description above, by cultural critic LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), appeared in his 1962 essay titled “Soul Food.” The essay was one of the first works to appear on the subject of soul food and countered a claim by another writer that blacks had no cuisine. Prior to the 1960s, this distinctive fare had only been defined regionally, as “southern,” “plantation,” and “Creole” foods. During the sixties, however, these foods gained an explicitly cultural flavor and soul food became a popular signifier of blackness, like hairstyles, fashion and music. Indeed, a wide spectrum of folks, many of whom disagreed on political issues, could come together at the soul food table and grease. Brown Bread vs. White Bread Not everyone embraced soul food, however. Elijah Muhammad, leader of the Nation of Islam and author of How to Eat to Live, spoke out against the prevailing eating practices of blacks. In the same year that LeRoi Jones wrote his ode to soul food, the Nation of Islam's newspaper, Muhammad Speaks, featured an article titled “Brown Bread vs. White Bread.” The article extolled the natural, wholesome and hearty virtues of brown bread while decrying the artificial, deficient and harmful qualities of white bread. The racial connotations of the article were surely not lost on its readers. The attack was clearly aimed at soul food, since it was understood that “a chicken wing on a piece of greasy bread” called for white bread. So while white bread signified blackness to Jones and many others, it had racist overtones for Muhammad. You Shall Not Eat Carrion, Swine and Blood Elijah Muhammad based his belief that “the white man's diet was killing blacks” on religious principles. He looked to the Koran to instruct blacks on what to eat. Following the Koran's tenet “thou shall not eat carrion, swine, and blood,” Muhammad elevated eating pork to an act against Allah. For those interested in becoming Muslims, the rejection of pork became an important rite of passage. Malcolm X, who became a Muslim in prison, recalled in his autobiography the precise moment that he gave up pork. Sitting at a table with other inmates as a plate of pork was passed around, he wrote, “I hesitated, with the platter in mid-air; then I passed it along to the inmate waiting next to me. He began serving himself; abruptly he stopped. I remember him turning, looking surprised at me. I said to him, ‘I don't eat pork'.” Thou Shalt Not Kill Comedian and activist Dick Gregory also weighed in on soul food. According to Gregory, “the quickest way to wipe out a group of people [was] to put them on a soul food diet.” Addressing nationalists directly, he said, “They will lay down a heavy rap on genocide in America with regard to black folks, then walk into a soul food restaurant and help the genocide along.” Gregory's criticism of soul food was based on health as well as ethics. In his memoir, Callus on My Soul, Gregory wrote: “I had been a participant in all of the ‘major' and most of the ‘minor' civil rights demonstrations of the early sixties. Under the leadership of Dr. King, I became totally committed to nonviolence, and I was convinced that nonviolence meant opposition to killing in any form. I felt the commandment ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill' applied to human beings not only in their dealings with each other—war, lynching, assassination, murder and the like—but in their practice of killing animals for food and sport. Animals and humans suffer and die alike. Violence causes the same pain, the same spilling of blood, the same stench of death, the same arrogant, cruel and brutal taking of life.” After becoming a vegetarian in 1965, Gregory used his public platform to promote his expanded notion of nonviolence. Live Longer, Look Younger, Feel Younger Dr. Alvenia Fulton, a renowned naturopath and long-time vegetarian, assisted Dick Gregory and many others who turned away from soul food. In her book, Vegetarianism: Fact or Myth? Eating to Live, Fulton urged blacks to base what they ate on what was best for their health. She believed a vegetarian diet was “best suited…to sustaining maximum health and assisting in regenerating and rejuvenating the body when illness occurred.” Fulton opened the Pioneer Natural Health Food Store and Restaurant in Chicago in the late 1950s. The South Side's first health food establishment, Pioneer provided an alternative to soul food, where customers could purchase organic fruits, vegetables, nuts, vitamins and minerals. Fulton advocated self-empowerment through healthier eating, inviting all to “live longer, look younger and feel younger” through vegetarianism. Beyond the Sixties Alvenia Fulton later collaborated with Dick Gregory on Dick Gregory's Natural Diet for Folks Who Eat: Cookin' With Mother Nature in 1973. The book became a bible of sorts to young activists and inspired many to open health food stores, co-ops and natural foods restaurants in cities across the country. Many of these restaurants marketed vegetarian soul food to bridge the gastronomic divides within African American communities—divides that had their origins in the sixties and continue today. ___________________________________________________ Sources Warren Belasco, Appetite for Change: How the Counterculture Took on the Food Industry, 1966-1988. New York: Pantheon, 1989. Dick Gregory, Callus on My Soul: A Memoir . Kensington Publishing Corporation, 2003. Dick Gregory, Dick Gregory's Natural Diet for Folks Who Eat: Cookin' With Mother Nature, James R. McGraw, ed., with Alvenia M. Fulton. New York: Perennial Harper, 1973, 1974. Elijah Muhammad, How to Eat to Live . Book No. 2. Chicago: Muhammad's Temple of Islam No. 2, 1972. LeRoi Jones [Amiri Baraka], “Soul Food,” Home : Social Essays . New York: Morrow, 1962, 1966: 101-104. Doris Witt, Black Hunger: Food and the Politics of U.S. Identity . New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Malcolm X. The Autobiography of Malcolm X . As told to Alex Haley. New York: Ba llantine, 1965, 1973.
How to cite this article: Marya Annette McQuirter and Tracye L. McQuirter,“Red, Black & Greens: The Politics of Soul Food in the 1960s,” www.blackvegetarians.org/features/red,black&greens.htm. January 2004 This essay is a work-in-progress. If you have more information about this subject, please share it with us at info@blackvegetarians.org.
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