Hog and Hominy: Soul Food From Africa to America

by Frederick Douglass

  For example, it appears that the majority of the farmers in the region of Tuskegee cultivated gardens where, during different seasons, they raised a variety of vegetables, including turnips, corn, collards, cabbage, and string beans. One recipe for “ol’ cabin cabbage” said that everybody knew how to make this cabbage dish that left an odor so strong “that when tomorrow comes you kin tell you done had cabbage yesterday.” The recipe described the odor as one of those “lingerin’ smells that hides aroun’ in the cornders an’ oozes up outer of the cracks long after the cabbage done et up an’ forgot about all ’ceptn them folks what can’t eat cabbages an eats it anyhow.” According to the recipe, the cook put on “the pot with a hunk er meat an’ a cabbage kivered with water an’ lets it bile an’ bile till you can’t tell the meat from the cabbage and cabbage from the meat.”43

  Farmers prepared collards and turnip greens more than any other vegetable because they had a much longer growing season and could be obtained at almost any time of the year. Good collard greens, according to one cookbook, called for a ham hock, but the cook added that a “hunk of fat back’ll do.”44 To make southern-style collards, “Keep yo’ meat an’ green stuff well kivered with bilin water an’ let it all cook some two hours. Don’t bile fast but jes’ let yo’ pot simper along slowsome. A piece of red pepper pod ain’t gonter hurt the seasonin’ none, an’ use your gumption when the bilin’ air pretty nigh finished ’bout whether or not mo’ salt air a needcessity.”45

  African-American cooks did not restrict the use of fatback to cooking cabbage and collards. One study of eating habits among African Americans in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia showed that parents gave crying babies a piece of fatback as a pacifier. Parents also introduced fatty bacon, commonly called a “streak of fat and a streak of lean” and other forms of pork into their children’s diets at an early age.46 Southerners used cured pork as a flavor booster, not as the center of the meal. As Joyce White remembers from her childhood in Choctaw County, Alabama, “Turnip, mustard, and collard greens glistened with a few slivers of ham hocks, and so did crowder peas and butter beans. A meaty ham bone was simmered with potatoes and green beans or with tomatoes, rice, corn, and okra for delicious stews.”47 Like corn bread, sweet potatoes, and yams, pork became part of the southern African American’s diet during infancy. This made it very difficult for many African Americans in their adult years to imagine a life without it.

  Very few African American farmers in Macon County, Alabama, owned land in 1895 and 1896. Instead, most farmed on property owned by white landlords. Their livelihood depended on how many bales of cotton they could grow, and therefore they devoted little time to raising subsistence crops. Generally, they dedicated their fields to cotton, with some corn, sweet potatoes, and a few other food crops. Most of the residents in the region around Tuskegee Institute, both black and white, ate a diet of “fat salt pork, corn meal, and molasses.” Farmers produced some molasses and cornmeal and bought some from stores. Participants in both studies received a large amount of their nutrition from “unbolted [unsifted] corn meal,” which, in the late 1890s, cost about a cent a pound.48 Unbolted cornmeal, though processed, retained a large amount of bran, which plays a vital role in maintaining a healthy colon.

  Farmers also raised and killed their own hogs. In most cases, however, the fat salt pork purchased in large quantities at southern markets came from meat-packing houses in Chicago and elsewhere. In Macon County, when a person referred to meat, he or she “always meant fat pork.” The authors of the Tuskegee study wrote, “Some of them knew it [meat] by no other name, nor did they seem to know much of any other meat except that of opossum and rabbits, which they occasionally hunted, and of chickens, which they raised to a limited extent.” One cook wrote that fried chicken was “hard ter larn a new cook ter do.” The cook added that it is easier to fry greasy than not and the “cook what dishes up greasy fried chicken oughter go out an’ wuck in the fiel’ whar she b’longs.”49

  FIGURE 3.4 Ten African American women in a cooking class at Hampton Institute, Hampton, Virginia. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-95109.

  In Franklin County, Virginia, African American sharecroppers ate very little or no beef, mutton, or other leaner meats, because they believed that those meats would make them sick. In addition to fat pork and wild game was part of their definition of meat. Generally, cooks boiled game in water until the meat fell off the bone, then seasoned and baked or barbecued it. In Alabama, no barbecue was considered done unless the meat was “saturated with blistering sauces.” For example, cooks in Eufaula, Alabama, basted the cooking meat, “whether it be pork, beef, lamb, kid, or chicken,” with a “mixture of vinegar, mustard, catsup, Worchester sauce, olive oil, Tabasco sauce, lemon juice and whole red peppers in great quantity. The sauce is boiled for three minutes after mixture before being applied to the meat.” The barbecuing and basting would last for hours, until the meat was an “aromatic brown.” 50

  In addition to barbecued meat, those in close proximity to water consumed sizable of quantities of fresh, salted, smoked, and fried fish. In Franklin County, in the Chesapeake Bay region, families ate eel, herring, mullet, roach, blue croakers, trout, and perch. Except in Florida and Georgia, southerners considered turtle a favorite dish, typically cooking it in a pot as part of a soup or stew. Eel and frog were considered delicacies as well. Southerners seasoned and batter-fried them just like catfish. Fish and small game remained popular because one could cook and eat them in one or two meals, which reduced the chances that the meat would spoil and harm someone.51

  FRIED FRESH TROUT

  Slice salt pork thin and fry until crisp. Remove and set aside. Dredge trout in flour or roll in cracker meal. Sprinkle with black pepper. Fry in the hot salt pork fat until deep brown. Serve garnished with parsley and fried salt pork.

  Pearl Bowser and Joan Eckstein, A Pinch of Soul in Book Form (New York: Avon, 1969), 225.

  During lean times, some trapped and sold rabbits as a way of earning extra money. The poor consumed small game such as rabbits because they did not have the technological ability to preserve and/or refrigerate much of anything. In many parts of the South, people stored their perishables in small portable wooden cupboards or dairies with no refrigeration capacity. In addition, the poor grazing lands in the South raised comparatively few beef cattle and sheep. The meat that was procured was inferior to that raised in the Southwest and Midwest. One scientist involved in the study of black farmers in the South concluded: “The scarcity of fresh meat and the difficulty of preserving it doubtless goes far toward explaining the [preference for salt pork] in the dietary tastes and habits of the people in general in this region, if not elsewhere in the south.”52

  WILD HARE IN TOMATO SAUCE

  1 cup meat from a young rabbit

  flour for dredging

  salt and black pepper to taste

  bacon fat

  4 scallions with tops, sliced

  2 cloves garlic, crushed

  sprig of fresh parsley

  4 tbs. butter

  2 tbs. Worcestershire sauce

  2 cups tomato juice

  ½ cup milk

  1 tsp. minced sweet basil

  Roll rabbit pieces in flour seasoned with salt and pepper. Brown in bacon fat. Make a sauce with sliced scallions, crushed garlic, parsley, butter, salt, Worcestershire sauce, tomato juice, milk, and basil. Pour over the rabbit while it is still hot. Cook 2 hours in a covered pan, then remove lid and cook 15 to 20 minutes more, reducing the sauce. Thicken sauce with a little cornmeal mixed with water if it is thin.

  Pearl Bowser and Joan Eckstein, A Pinch of Soul in Book Form (New York: Avon, 1969), 215.

  Technological stagnation also explains the continuation of simple and primitive cooking methods in late-nineteenth-century southern cooking. Most southerners, black or white, could not afford a stove. Instead, they continued to cook in the ashes of a fireplace or with iron pots and pans over the h
ot embers of a fire. For example, in Macon County, Alabama, only two of the families in the study had enough money to own a stove, and, in Franklin County, Virginia, several women interviewed said they did not bake bread because they did not have an oven. Other women interviewed complained that store-bought, highly processed loaves of white bread lacked any kind of savory, mouthwatering appeal. Instead, they preferred various types of corn and wheat flour biscuits. Southerners made and ate biscuits sliced in half and stuffed with pork, fried eggs, cold baked sweet potatoes, and other items. Pone bread, johnnycakes, hoecakes, and ashcakes from the colonial period remained very popular because most southerners owned very few cooking utensils. Some recognized that consuming small amounts of ash and charcoal cured flatulence and upset stomachs. As a result, they sometimes ate pone bread baked in ashes without cleaning it off.53

  In the 1890s, black farmers in and around Tuskegee, Alabama, were still preparing cornmeal in ways that dated back to the antebellum period. “The daily fare,” wrote John Wesslay Hoffman, agricultural chemistry and biology teacher at Tuskegee Institute from 1894 to 1896, “is prepared in very simple ways. Corn meal is mixed with water and baked on the flat surface of a hoe or griddle. The salt pork is sliced thin and fried until very brown and much of the grease is fried out.” He went on to say, “Molasses from cane or sorghum is added to the fat, making what is known as ‘sop,’ which is eaten with the corn bread.”54 In general, among southerners, corn bread was the staff of life, and preparing the easy-to-make batter became a daily routine. Southerners usually ate corn bread Monday through Friday and biscuits on the weekend and on special occasions. In addition to ashcakes and hoecakes, southerners also made crackling bread, or fatty bread, out of cornmeal.

  Farmers in Charleston County, South Carolina, made crackling bread in the wintertime during hog-killing days. The fat of the hog was cut into cubes and rendered in a wash pot set over a hot fire. The skin, writes Wendell Brooks, rises “to the top of the boiling grease, growing shriveled and brown.” A cook would skim off these cracklings and then press them to remove excess grease. To make delicious golden brown crackling bread, an African-American recipe from North Georgia called for two cups of cornmeal with one cup of crackling. Add “salt, soda, buttermilk and enough water to make a soft dough (or use ⅔ cups of buttermilk). Bake pretty brown.” Definitions and recipes for crackling bread varied across the South. For example, black farmers in Tuskegee, Alabama, made theirs with crisp pieces of fried bacon, cornmeal, water, soda, and salt and, according to Hoffman, “baked [it] in an oven or over the fireplace.” Characteristically, cooks boiled or fried their food, and most dishes arrived at the table stewed or very crisp. According to Hoffman, many black farmers in the study suffered from various forms of indigestion because they consumed large amounts of fried foods.55

  Fried pork and cornmeal in one shape or another appeared daily in the southern diet. A list of foods eaten by more affluent African American families in the study showed more variety, however, including dairy products, fruits, vegetables, and better cuts of meat. Those who ate greater amounts of fruits and vegetables tended to live near the influence of the Tuskegee and Hampton institutes. According to the food studies’ government researchers, these families did not represent the average black belt residents. Apparently, increased educational opportunities and earning power improved the eating habits of southern farmers. In short, Tuskegee and Hampton improved the diets of the farmers within their sphere of influence. In addition, in contrast to those in Macon County, Alabama, African Americans in Franklin County, Virginia, had greater access to fish and therefore healthier, leaner forms of protein.56

  Historians still know very little about how diets changed after the Civil War and the role diet played in elite white- and black-led reform efforts at the turn of the century. There is a body of literature on food reform within the history of the vegetarian movement led by elite white reformers during this period. That movement, however, occurred principally in the Northwest and Northeast and made very few inroads among southerners, black or white.57 Regarding white Southern elites, Historian Joe Gray Taylor insists that after the Civil War they did not shun black eyed peas, grits, or collard greens as white elites in the North did. He writes, “with the exception of New Orleans and possibly Charleston and Baltimore, the concept of fine food in the European sense hardly existed in the Old South.” Instead, southern elites inherited from “British yeoman, from the Indian, and from the frontier. . . a preference for large amounts of different kinds of good food rather than a few dishes of presumably superb food.” Taylor goes on to say, “the most striking fact about the diet of the New South, from the Civil War through World War II, is not that it changed, but how little it changed.”58

  The literature on the Tuskegee Woman’s Club, started in 1895, and similar clubs at the Hampton Institute sheds very little light on upper-class black women’s efforts to reform the African American diet in the South.59 Most of these black self-help organizations were controlled by upper-class women. For example, the Tuskegee Women’s Club only admitted female faculty members of Tuskegee or wives or female relatives of male Tuskegee faculty. Most of these women’s clubs left a more substantial paper trail about their struggles to stop the tide of lynching that racked the country at the turn of the century than on their efforts to reduce the amount of fried foods African Americans were eating.60

  African American Margaret Washington, the wife of Booker T. Washington and founder of the Tuskegee Woman’s Club, was a typical progressive era reformer in many ways but not in all. She championed Tuskegee’s mantra of “Bath, Broom, and Bible,” that is, cleanliness and Christian morality.61 She put great emphasis on developing biblical motherhood and wifehood in the rural women of Tuskegee, Alabama. What was different about her and other black reformers of the turn of the century, however, was a conservative black nationalism. The first lady of Tuskegee put particular emphasis on teaching black history and encouraging black landownership, which she believed would lead to black economic independence. Margaret Washington’s focus on African American property ownership, which she called an obtainable goal, was a sharp contrast to other women’s club leaders of the period who spent their energy fighting for women’s suffrage. Yet there is evidence that crusaders at the Tuskegee and Hampton institutes encouraged African American farmers to produce most of what they cooked, consume less fried food and fatback, and diversify their diets. And, while they did not reduce fat and fried food consumption that much, black farmers close to Tuskegee and Hampton did grow more of what they ate, to the benefit of their diet. These farmers ate foods free of harmful pesticides. They also ate large amounts of fiber-rich cornmeal, while the lye that went into processing their hominy cleansed both the liver and stomach.

  The Tuskegee Woman’s Club did provide cooking classes through the college, but scholars provide no details about the instructional content of the classes.62 Some insights, however, can be gleaned from Booker T. Washington himself. In a letter dated November 23, 1899, to one of his school administrators, Washington writes: “I call your attention to the enclosed bill of fare for the students. It seems to me that they are having too much fat meat; you will notice that they had bacon and gravy for two meals.”63 Like Professor Samuel H. Lockett before him, Washington wanted blacks to consume less salt pork and fat. Perhaps reducing the amount of fried foods was a goal of his wife’s reform agenda and cooking classes?

  Another insight into black reform movements and the southern diet comes from a look at the institute’s menu. It shows that students at Tuskegee ate far more broiled foods than did African American farmers in Alabama, who seemed to have fried food with almost every meal. The Wizard of Tuskegee, as Booker T. Washington was called, was a micromanager in advancing his agenda. For example, he assigned African American Laura Evangeline Mabry the job of campus food critic, or dietitian. From Birmingham, Alabama Mabry graduated from Tuskegee in 1895 and stayed on as member of the school’s staff until 1901. In a report to Wa
shington on the institute’s cafeteria dinner menu, she comments on the fare: “Boiled Peas. Boiled Sweet-potatoes. Stewed beef and Corn bread. The peas were boiled without fat. Enough hard corn was found in the peas to make them unpalatable and unattractive. The beef was not seasoned with pepper and salt, but the onions added much to the taste. Potatoes and bread were nice and hot.”64 Perhaps this menu reflects how Margaret and Booker T. Washington wanted all black folks to cook their food—though presumably with properly cooked corn.

  Atlanta University graduate James Weldon Johnson also complained about the extent of fried food and fatback consumption among rural blacks in Georgia. Johnson, an African American from the city of Jacksonville, Florida, did a stint as a rural teacher during which he boarded with a family in Hampton, Georgia, thirty miles south of Atlanta. For the first two or three weeks, his landlady served him “fried chicken twice a day, for breakfast and supper.” Thereafter the menu “steadily degenerated until my diet was chiefly fat pork and greens and an unpalatable variety of corn bread. For a while I lived almost exclusively on buttermilk, because I could no longer stomach this coarse fare.” He adds, “Then it was that I looked longingly at every chicken I passed, and would have given a week’s wages for a beefsteak.”65 Again, we see an upper-class southerner complaining that the lower classes fried too much of their food and did not include enough variety in their diet.

  In general, black southerners after the abolition of slavery continued to exist on a diet of salt pork and corn bread. Emancipation did give them greater access to poultry, however, resulting for some in the cooking and consumption of fried chicken “for breakfast and supper.” Fruit cobblers, biscuits, turnips, sweet potatoes, and polk salad (also called poke sallet, greens from the pokeberry or poke plant) were also familiar foods in black southern homes. Some southern families ate polk salad boiled or floured and deep-fried like okra. Others served peas, beans, cabbage, and greens. Studies of late-nineteenth-century eating habits conclude that the poorest families suffered not from an insufficient quantity of food but rather from a lack of quality and variety. A special concern was the ability to obtain fresh fruits and vegetables during the winter and early spring, when most working-class families ate a monotonous nitty-gritty diet heavy on potatoes, cabbage, and turnips. High milk prices also put that source of vitamins and minerals out of range for most poor black families. One traveler observed that those without milk to make butter would instead use “bacon grease on the biscuits and corn bread, or you could dip it in the stewed tomatoes.” Thus, those with a cow or goat had better and more diverse diets.66