Black Southern Food Tradition

By: Lamont Jack Pearley

  Dinner has always been a festive event in both sides of my family for generations. There are times during the week, as I grew up, where dinner wasn’t filled with the laughter and banter of many relatives. However, on any given Friday through Sunday, it is very likely that all the family would come together to eat what is now called “Soul or Southern Food,” laugh, joke and catchup with one another. Dinners like these stand out because it’s not a calendar tradition. It could be as impromptu as my uncle coming to my grandparents apartment to pick up my cousin, and then my grandma announces that she’s either cooked, or going to cook a big meal. Note, she doesn’t use the term, “Big Meal,” that’s unofficial, informal common knowledge. 

  For this assignment, I interviewed five family members who still partake in this tradition. First, my Uncle Donald McNeil, who is a 73 year old retired Vietnam veteran who’s made a career serving the Army. He remembers the years from the late 1970s through the early 1990s before my grandparents moved, that we would participate in this tradition. He shares that Sundays were the days we all sat the big table to eat. 

Donald McNeil

Uncle Don - “I do remember that we all would get together when we were living there or when I wasn't living there, and we would still come by and mom would say “hey i got dinner coming,” and she would be in the kitchen rattling those pots. She would have some potato salad, some collard greens and some fried chicken.  She'd always have something! She's was always trying to keep the family together and that's how she did it. Those things come from way back. From our family in Mississippi.”

   I remember my grandmother making home made ice cream, which according to my uncle, was something she did back in the old country prior to my grandparents migrating.  During our interview, as I began to understand that what I’ve come to realize is a tradition, started well before my existence. The fact that we approached what became our tradition similar to the reading of the “Origins of Soul Food,” where we were participants in a Self-Evident style of food traditions. This is just what we ate then, and what we eat now. Furthermore, I asked my uncle if we ever knew that we were involved in tradition preservation, and if we referred to our meals as “Soul Food” or Southern Food” and Uncle Don explains: 

Uncle Don - “That’s what she made! That was what she made! Mom made country style, Southern food because that's what she did. It was never asking for that. Mom would make whatever she would make.”

  I asked my cousin Monique Covington, 41, if she’d remember anything. Similar to the Gullah Geechie video, Monique recalls it, and currently lives it in a Self-Conscious space. After my grandparents moved, then later passed on, Monique set out to replicate the weekend meals we’d attend at her home where she lived with my Aunt Pat, (my mothers youngest sister) her husband Uncle Stanley and their daughter, (my cousins) Monique and Ashleigh. Mo’ being the older of the two. Her memory of those times serves as a connection to history and is very tribal. 

  Cousin Monique - “ African American, Native American central, Christian based celebrations as I remember from our thanksgivings consisted of Native American Dishes like sweet potatoes purée and pot liquor, that where traditional southern dishes that I remember. Also African American southern traditional dishes such as pig feet and chitterlings were amongst what was served. Praying over the meal was a staple and cooking and spending time congregating with relatives was central to our gatherings.”
She goes on to say: “Traditional gatherings were important to maintaining a sense of connection with family so when elders pass on, children of elders carry on traditional celebrations at their homes. The youngest daughter(Aunt Pat) began to hold traditional family gatherings at her residence once the matriarch(our grandma) passed on. This keeps a sense of connection throughout the family and ensure that moral values are  passed on and traditions remain intact. “

  Keeping the family connected was one of the points also made by my uncle. Family bonding through cultural traditions were extremely significant to the Gullah Geechie, along with a sense of normalcy which was also important to the migrants in the story of the “Origins of Soul Food.” Denise Pearley, my wife, who I will not share her age here, also holds dear to the intentions of tradition as a family bond and structure.  Her grandma comes from the Gullah section of South Carolina, and brought those traditions with her to Harlem. Again, we find that the food being eaten, and the activities during these meals didn’t have a name, it was just our home. Denise shares:

Denise, wife - “I started identifying that the foods that my grandmother was cooking was southern food when I got older and I started reading about it. I started inquiring and having conversation amongst my friends and their family members. This is how I found out that chitlins was a southern meal. You know, collard greens was a southern food, you know a lot of the foods that she cooked are the traditions that she had, that we had in her family.” 

  My children LJ, 13 and Sammie, 12, shares that there are roles in our food tradition. They’ve identified that mommy cooks dinner and dad cooks breakfast, and their job is to set the tables, pass out napkins and pour drinks. There is no portion divide, according to Sammie, we all get the same amount. What I’ve come to realize is our food is more than the meal itself. The fact that for over five generations, my family used food as a way to bond, educate, discipline and joke, while inadvertently preserving traditional behaviors is amazing to me. My uncle identified that the family dinner time in my household presently is the result of his grand and great grandparents in Mississippi. My wife identified that though the food and behaviors of the south were present in her childhood home, she didn’t experience everyone eating together intentionally, so for her, it is important and on purpose that we consciously eat as a family, pray as a family and eat “Southern Cuisines” as a family. 

This story is featured on the African American Folklorist’s Weekend Edition segment broadcasted on WKU Public Radio & NPR

Below you will find the transcript of the segment:

The term Soul Food and Southern Style food were not an initial naming convention for the meals eaten in the households I grew up in. We ate what grandma cooked. What granddad bought, for auntie and momma to prepare. As time went on, the meals of my family began popping up in stores around our community, then particular spaces across the nation by the name “Soul Food” or “Country Kitchen.” I remember Country Kitchen specifically, because it was on the route home from church, and on special occasions my family and I would stop there to order meals. The food was good, not as good as my grandma, or mother’s, but non the less we enjoyed. The irony is as I matured in the space of being a folklorist, I wondered why we paid for meals identical to what we ate at home. And when and why did my grandma’s and mother’s meals receive this name. To us it was just dinner.  To many people, it’s just dinner, lunch or breakfast. 

As I pondered this, I began to remember the great times we had as a family, either around the dinner table, or sprinkled around my grandparents home. My grandparents had five children, and their children had children. So it would be a full house. I began to think about the activities that took place during those times. As a folklorist these are the questions, research and interests we dive into, and in diving, I am introduced to Foodways. 

For folklorists, the study of foodways is usually based on the research and inquiry of what food means to communities, families, folk groups and regions. Since I out to investigate the food naming conventions and tradition of my family, I thought it would make since to first get a working definition of the term foodways, making the connection of the study to the actual traditions. I sat down with Dr. Ann K. Ferrell,  Program Director and Associate Professor for Folk Studies at WKU who shares with us the meaning of Foodways as a folklorist, and the many ways food plays significant roles in our social, political, economic life. I then sat with my Uncle, a military man that was part of the migration from the Jim Crow south to discuss our family foodway traditions that are still practiced in my home today. If you have any African American Family Food traditions you would like to share, contact me at lamont.pearley956@topper.wku.edu.
Here’s a piece of the interview:

Dr. Ann K Ferrell

Dr. Ann K Ferrell: Foodways is variously defined as pretty much everything to do with food from how we procure it, you know, or gather it, to how we prepare it, consume it, and even how we clean up afterwards. So folklorists have been interested in food ways for a really long time. And as with any kind of folklore, research, what often the questions that we ask are mostly about meaning. So what is food mean in people's lives? 

Lamont Jack Pearley:  What does food mean, in African American households, as far as I can remember, from Friday through Sunday, it meant family, friends, and what is now referred to as Southern Soul cooking. However, we never refer to it as such, and church was a big part. Here's my uncle Donald born in Chicago by way of Mississippi with some backstory.

Uncle Don:  Well, I do remember that we all would get together even when we were living there, or when I wasn't living there, we would still come by and mom would say, Hey, I got dinner coming, and she would be in the kitchen rattling those pots.  And she would have some potato salad and some collard greens, and some fried chicken and man, everybody will be sitting at the table, then we come and we say grace…we sit at the big table normally on Sunday, but she has small things during the week, on a Friday she was always trying to keep the family together.  And that's how she did it. Those things come back come way back from our family in Mississippi. That's what my folks are from. That's how they did in those days, especially on Sunday.

Lamont Jack Pearley: My initial question was based on my memory, but this was happening before me Anthony Eric Monique and Ashley was ever born, right?

Uncle Don:  That's where it started. That's where the tradition you see, that's where it came from. When I'm talking about it, the tradition I saw came from down south. That's what you saw because that's the way it came. And it continued to roll like that.

Lamont Jack Pearley: This traveled from Mississippi to Chicago to New York.

Uncle Don: That's correct. And my grandparents, that’s the way they did this thing. And my parents just followed suit with my grandparents.

Lamont Jack Pearley: At what point did it become called Souther Food?

Uncle Don: Mom made Country style Southern food, because that’s what she did.