During the Great Depression, our federal government created the Work Progress Administration ("WPA") as part of the New Deal. The WPA hired millions of Americans to construct public works and projects, like roads and buildings. But, the WPA also did more than build a bunch of big stuff. It also undertook major initiatives to use art and literature to record our culture and document our history.
One of those initiatives was known as Federal Project Number One. At its height, this Federal Project One employed 40,000 actors, artists, musicians and writers. About 10,000 of those individuals were writers who worked as part of the Federal Writers' Project ("FWP"). Their task was to create a "self-portrait of America," through written histories and guidebooks. All of their work was to be done without discrimination on the basis of race, creed, color, religion or political affiliation. It was diversity, equity and inclusion long before DEI ever entered the lexicon of our country.
One of the FWP's written histories became known as the Slave Narration Project. This project involved writers tracking down former slaves to record their experiences. The work resulted in the collection of 2,300 first-person accounts, along with 500 pictures. I previously wrote about this effort when I was exploring the origins of barbecue. I tracked down the first hand account of a former slave, Wesley Jones, who talked about how he prepared barbecue while enslaved in South Carolina. I read about other peoples' experiences, which were stories that, but for the Federal Writers Project and the Slave Narration Project, would have been lost to time.
The FWP also had another project called America Eats. It was a short-lived effort to write and publish a book about regional foodways in the United States. Writers had the assignment of gathering information about food and food related events and then writing short essays to be included in the book. The effort continued for a few years, but then lost its funding as the United States entered into World War II. The book, America Eats, was never published, although the source material is still available.
Watching all of this unfold got me to thinking about Federal Project Number One again. I have been thinking about how, in my own small way, I have been collecting some stories about not just people, but culture, community and history. Some of those stories are the types of history that have been targeted by this administration. I thought it was time for me to create my own Federal Project Number One.
That has led to this effort, which will become my own Federal Project Number One. It will be 21st century effort to tell the stories about food, culture and community of marginalized communities, of working people, and their contribution to not just what we eat, but who we are. It will be my (very small) contribution to fighting back against a white supremacist administration, supported by billionaires, who have turned facts into enemies and seek to deny us the trth about ourselves.
As I walk the same path as writers did back in the 1930s, my hope is add to their efforts to explore and preseve the interconnected history of people and food in the United States. We must remember that who we are as Americans is not defined by our skin color, our gender, or religion, or even what we think. It is defined by what is inside us: our hopes, our dreams, and our desire to create a better life for ourselves and our loved ones. We must never lose our past, because not only does it illustrate how our path has gone awry, but it also provides a path toward a better future.
THE INITIATIVES
What Did You Learn in School Today
(Pete Seeger Initiative)
A Pete Seeger song provides a focus upon the history and contribution of minority, marginalized and other communities to what could be considered our common foodways. Much of this history is not reguarly taught in our schools and all of it is threatened by the current environment in the United States.
1. Kitchen Pepper. The story of how enslaved cooks flavored many of the dishes they prepared with a spice mix that combined ingredients from their homelands and from around the world.
2. Carolina Crab Rice. A recognition that rice would not exist in American foodways if it were not for the knowledge and skills of Africans forcibly brought to the New World as slaves. (This post is also part of my Beyond Borders project.)
3. Fish Pepper Sauce. A brief exploration of the cultivation of the fish pepper in the Chesapeake Bay region, and its varied uses.
4. Low Country Brown Oyster Stew. A discussion of the contribution that African-Americans have made to the pantry of the American kitchen, including some relatively unknown, but still present, ingredients that have used in dishes for centuries. (This post is also part of my Beyond Borders project.)
5. Antebellum Fried Oysters. A post about how African American slaves in the Chesapeake Bay region relied upon, among other things, oysters to supplement the meager provisions from their slavematers, with a recipe to prepare fried oysters as slaves would have done in their houses.
This Land is Your Land
(Woody Guthrie Initiative)
The iconic Woody Guthry song reminds us that this country belongs to the people, from our first nations to those who came willingly or unwillingly to its shores, even to the present day. These posts highlight specific stories of individuals, hopefully with a tie to our foodways, whether ingredients, cooking processes and/or the final dishes.
1. Wesley Jones' Barbecue and Antebellum Sauce. This is the post that started it all. It is my first effort to explore the origin of barbecue, focusing on the techniques used by African slaves prior to their emancipation, as told by Wesley Jones through the Federal Writers Project.
2. Louis Armstrong's Creole Red Beans and Rice. This post explores the favorite dish of one of the greatest jazz performers in history, the Great "Satchmo," Louis Armstrong.
3. Bill Bayley's West Indies Salad. The story of a small grocery store owner who created a dish that features large in the cuisine around Mobile Bay, Alabama.
4. Edith Dyson's Crab Cakes. The story of a granddaughter's memories, of her grandfather, a farmer who lost everything on his beloved farm in the town of Fordtown, which disappeared with the emergence of a naval air station, all of which came to light with a crabcake recipe.
5. Captain Crockett's Last Breakfast. A reminder that there are stories all around us and all we need is to look and learn. This particularly story involved a ship's captain aboard the Frank Cassidy and a fight in 1898 with the cook over a late breakfast that left three people dead.
We Will Sing One Song
(Joe Hill Initiative)
The legendary union organizer Joe Hill and his famous song to explore how diversity, equity and inclusion -- all peoples, regardless of race, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability and, even, citizenship -- defines what it means to be American people.
1. Hamdi's Fried Livers: A post about how the Somali-American community are an important part of our overall American community, as they share the same dreams and hopes that we all do, as they contribute to our acadmia, economy, and society. The post also features a recipe for fried livers that comes from a cookbook created by Somali-American youth in Minnesota.
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More posts are in the works, so please check back again.
PEACE.
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