The history of the Black American diet is a complex and multifaceted story, deeply intertwined with themes of survival, adaptation, cultural preservation, and the ongoing struggle for equality. From the crops brought over on slave ships to the innovative dishes created in plantation kitchens, Black American cuisine reflects a remarkable ability to transform limited resources into flavorful and nourishing meals. Often initially denigrated and belittled due to its origins, this cuisine has evolved into a source of cultural pride and a symbol of Black identity.
Roots in Africa: The Foundation of a Cuisine
The story begins in Africa, where a rich agricultural heritage laid the foundation for the culinary traditions that would later take root in America. Thriving fields produced crops such as African rice, okra, watermelon, yams, African eggplant, and cowpeas. These staples formed the basis of African cuisine for centuries, shaped by farmers who adapted to challenging growing conditions, chefs who developed unique spice combinations, and families who passed down their knowledge through generations.
During the period of the transatlantic slave trade, enslaved people ate African foods aboard slave ships. These included rice, millet, okra, black-eyed peas, yams, and legumes such as kidney beans and lima beans. These crops were brought to North America and became a staple in Southern cuisine. Slave ships were provisioned with African vegetables, fruits, and animals to feed the enslaved people bound in chains below the ships' decks. These items were later planted and used in the New World for food and as cash crops. The introduction of African plants to the Americas that shaped American cuisine was part of what is called the Columbian exchange.
Researchers from Mercer University Libraries said: "The foods selected to bring to America were brought over for specific reasons. 'They all remain palatable long after harvesting and were thus ideal for use on the slow voyage from Africa. The guineafowl is a bird indigenous to Africa imported to the Americas by way of the slave trade; the bird was brought by the Spanish to the Caribbean, and introduced to the South of what is now the United States in the early 16th century. Guinea fowl became a source of meat for enslaved Black Americans and eventually part of the subsistence culture of the whole region.
The Evolution of Soul Food: From Plantation to Plate
Soul food originated in the home cooking of the rural Southern United States or the "Deep South" during the time of slavery, using locally gathered or raised foods and other inexpensive ingredients. Enslaved Africans in the South continued to prepare their traditional dishes of guinea fowl and plant foods native to West and Central Africa. Soul food recipes have pre-slavery influences, as West African and European foodways were adapted to the environment of the region.
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Enslaved people were typically given a peck of cornmeal and 3-4 pounds of pork per week, and those rations formed the basis of African American soul food. Most enslaved people needed to consume a high-calorie diet to replenish the calories spent working long days in the fields or performing other physically arduous tasks. The slave owners would have smoked ham and corn pudding while the enslaved were left with the offal. The leftovers and scraps from meals cooked for the "big houses" (plantation houses) were called "juba" by the enslaved. They were put in troughs on Sundays for the slaves to eat. Archaeological and historical research concerning slave cabins in the Southern United States indicates that enslaved African Americans used bowls more often than flatware and plates, suggesting that they primarily made stews and "gumbo" for meals, using local ingredients gathered in nature, vegetables grown in their gardens, and leftover animal scraps rejected by their enslavers. This process allowed enslaved people to create new dishes, for which they developed a variety of ways to season and add spice using hot sauces they prepared.
During slavery times, Gullah people in the Lowcountry of South Carolina and Georgia practiced a fishing culture that came from West Africa and made canoes similar in appearance to the ones in sub-Saharan Africa. Gullah people passed down their fishing traditions and prepared meals of fish using local ingredients from the region, developing fish dishes that are still a part of Gullah culture.
Frederick Douglass said in his autobiography that because enslaved people living on the Eastern shore of Maryland near the Choptank River received the bare minimum in food from their enslavers, they fished for food to supplement their diet, catching turtles, fish, and eels. Douglass wrote: "The men and women slaves received, as their monthly allowance of food, eight pounds of pork, or its equivalent in fish, and one bushel of corn meal". Another way they supplemented their diet was by growing vegetable gardens; they grew corn, potatoes, peas, beans, herbs, and melons. They did not have fat or cooking oil to cook their food.
Black Americans in St. Mary's County created recipes during slavery that were passed down orally in their families. To add heat and flavor to seafood dishes, enslaved and free Africans in Baltimore and the Chesapeake region of Maryland grew fish peppers in their gardens.
The diet of slaves in Virginia generally included meat from farm animals, vegetables, blackberries, walnuts, and seafood. Historical research at the Burroughs plantation in Franklin County, Virginia by the National Park Service showed that enslaved people there had a diet of cornbread, pork, chicken, sweet potatoes, and boiled corn for breakfast. Along the coast, enslaved people ate oysters and seafood. Booker T. Washington was born enslaved in Franklin County, Virginia in 1856 and wrote an autobiography titled, The Story of My Life and Work and Up from Slavery, that described the diet he grew up with as an enslaved child. Booker T. Washington's mother cooked over an open fireplace or in skillets and pots. Washington, his mother, and siblings ate out of pots and skillets while white families ate from plates and flatware using forks and spoons. His mother prepared one-pot meals for her family using local meats, vegetables, nuts, and berries, combining all the ingredients in a pot to make a stew.
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Enslaved people fished for food in the Chesapeake Bay and prepared seafood meals. In Virginia's nearby creeks and rivers, slaves caught catfish, crayfish, perch, herring, and turtles for food. White plantation owners in Virginia rarely provided food to feed their slaves. To supplement their diets, enslaved people relied on Igbo methods such as hunting, fishing, and foraging for food and prepared meals that were influenced by Igbo culture.
A few enslaved chefs had some degree of autonomy because of their cooking skills, such as Hercules Posey and James Hemings. Hercules Posey was the enslaved cook for George Washington at Mount Vernon in Virginia. Posey's dishes were so popular among elite White families that he had quasi-freedom to leave the house on his own and earn money selling leftovers. According to historians, the dishes Posey made were influenced by West African, European, and Native American foodways. He created dishes of veal, roast beef, and duck, along with puddings and jellies prepared in a way not unlike that of other chefs, but creating his own sauces and flavors.
James Hemings (brother of Sally Hemings) was born enslaved in colonial Virginia and was the head chef for Thomas Jefferson. Hemings combined African, French, and Native American food traditions. While enslaved, Hemings traveled to Paris, France with Jefferson, where he trained under French chefs and learned how to make macaroni pie (today called macaroni and cheese). Sesame is an African crop that was brought to South Carolina in 1730 during the slave trade. Thomas Jefferson noted how enslaved people prepared stews, baked breads, boiled their greens with sesame seeds, and made sesame pudding. Slaves ate sesame raw, toasted, and boiled. Some slaves grew herbs in their gardens to add flavor to their food.
Other cooking techniques were boiling and simmering food in an earthenware or iron pot known as colonoware. Salt was used to preserve meats for weeks until consumption. To sweeten their food and beverages, slaves used molasses. They also made blackstrap molasses, a very dark molasses with robust flavor, by cooking the juice of sugarcane low and slow. Other sweet sauces created and used by slaves were sorghum syrup, similar to molasses, made by cooking the juice of the sorghum plant.
Following their integration into Western culture, African foods were significantly modified. Black-eyed peas, yams and sweet potatoes are a few of the foods that commonly appear in soul food dishes. Enslaved Africans also brought over okra and the kola nut, which Western Africans often chewed as a source of caffeine for energy. Enslaved Africans used knowledge from their heritage to create what we now call soul food, a cuisine enjoyed by many that is inextricable from the American South. For example, gumbo, a renowned dish in New Orleans, is usually thickened with okra and is a version of a Senegalese stew made in plantation kitchens by enslaved Africans.
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Millet and sorghum, cereal grain plants rich in nutrition, were commonly found in early Senegal and Sudan. They were especially prized in areas where rice and wheat were difficult to grow. The typical African meal used millet and sorghum as a type of porridge in stews and sauces. Millet and sorghum lack gluten, so the bread made from these grains is unleavened and flat. These “flatbreads” inspired the soul food classic: hot water cornbread. These breads were created to help scoop up food and replace utensils at meals. The yam is a staple in African culture. Enslaved Africans were adept at preparing yams and sweet potatoes due to their physical similarities. Yams can be prepared in multiple ways, and a standard method is pounding. A gelatinous consistency is produced when pounded yams are combined with water and spices.
Defining Soul Food: A Matter of Identity and Tradition
Soul food historian Adrian Miller said the difference between soul food and Southern food is that soul food is intensely seasoned and uses a variety of meats to add flavor to food and adds a variety of spicy and savory sauces. These spicy and savory sauces add robust flavor. This method of preparation was influenced by West African cuisine where West Africans create sauces to add flavor and spice to their food. Black Americans also add sugar to make cornbread, while "white southerners say when you put sugar in corn bread, it becomes cake". Bob Jeffries, the author of Soul Food Cookbook, said the difference between soul food and Southern food is: "While all soul food is Southern food, not all Southern food is soul. Impoverished White and Black people in the South cooked many of the same dishes stemming from Southern cooking traditions, but styles of preparation sometimes varied.
The earliest use of the word "soul food" to describe a type of cuisine is found in a 1909 published memoir of a former slave named Thomas L. Johnson. Johnson described a church service where the congregation was served food. He wrote: "There are some, when preaching, only preach three-quarters of the truth, or less, when serving up dishes of soul-food to suit the palates of those they must please." The term soul food became popular during the 1960s and 1970s in the midst of the Black Power movement. LeRoi Jones (later known as Amiri Baraka) published an article entitled "Soul Food" and was one of the key proponents for establishing the food as a part of the Black American identity. Those who had participated in the Great Migration found within soul food a reminder of the home and family they had left behind after moving to unfamiliar northern cities. Soul food restaurants were Black-owned businesses that served as neighborhood meeting places where people socialized and ate together.
According to author Laretta Henderson, middle-class African Americans embrace their "blackness" by preparing and eating soul food. Henderson wrote: In its culinary incarnation, "soul food" was associated with a shared history of oppression and inculcated, by some, with cultural pride. Soul food was eaten by the bondsmen. It was also the food former slaves incorporated into their diet after emancipation. Therefore, during the 1960s, middle-class blacks used their reported consumption of soul food to distance themselves from the values of the white middle class, to define themselves ethnically, and to align themselves with lower-class blacks. Irrespective of political affiliation or social class, the definition of "blackness", or "soul", became part of everyday discourse in the black community.
Signature Dishes: Stories Woven into Food
From steaming plates of savory red beans and rice to cake stands overflowing with decadent sweets, foods shape our culinary world and are woven into our culture, traditions, and histories. In the United States, generations of African Americans have established and maintained Foodways rooted in the Black community. However, while these recipes may grace our dinner tables, their origins are often underrepresented or forgotten.
Many New Orleans children, black and white, share the memory of savory red beans and rice bubbling on the burner. Jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong signed his letters “Red beans and ricely yours.” The dish has its roots in New Orleans Creole culture-an African and European mix. Oysters are as much an African American food story as the ham bones and hominy grits that enslaved people ate. Along the East Coast, African Americans worked on schooners as hired captains, operators and crew; hogged or gathered oysters along the shore; and planted, harvested and shucked them for oyster companies. Black vendors peddled oysters on city streets.
The leafy greens of the cabbage family have grown across Africa, Europe and North America for centuries. But greens flavored with ham hocks is a survival story. Enslaved African Americans stretched their allotments of food by growing greens and using scraps of meat to add flavor and nutrients. Throughout the South and in northern cities, African Americans made a living by street vending, or “huckstering.” Along streets and back roads, hucksters sold vegetables, seafood, baked sweets and legumes. In the Caribbean and South America, enslaved women could garden and sell their crops at market. Their produce and other products made money for their slaveowners and contributed to a thriving trade largely controlled by women.
Calas (ka-la) are a delectable example of fare that survives today and can be traced back to Africa. These rice fritters are fried until golden brown and dusted with powdered sugar. When African people were taken from their homelands, their knowledge of rice cultivation went with them. What made calas’ origin unique was their connection to the Code Noir. Created and implemented in French colonial Louisiana, the Code Noir outlined guidelines for the treatment of enslaved and free people of African descent. Although the Code Noir was officially abolished by 1848, its influence continued to heavily regulate the lives of enslaved people. One article of the code-integral to our fritter story-prohibited enslavers from requiring enslaved people to work on Sundays and holidays. Typically depicted wearing tignons, flowing dresses, and white aprons, cala women were seen and heard throughout the French Quarter. With coal-heated braziers and baskets balanced atop their heads, each rice fritter they sold carried the legacy of West African food culture.
Although James Hemings didn’t invent the mac and cheese recipe found at modern social gatherings, he revolutionized America’s association with the dish and used earnings from his culinary skills to buy his freedom in 1796. After he died, Hemings’ legacy continued to be served on dinner tables across the country.
One such dish with origins in Black empowerment is the humble bean pie. Introduced by the Nation of Islam in the 1930s, the bean pie was created as a healthier substitute for the commonly enjoyed sweet potato pie. Founded in Detroit in 1930 and undergirded by Islamic teachings, the NOI worked to uplift African Americans’ social, moral, and economic standing. During the 1950s and 1960s, the organization became a haven for some activists and leaders in the Civil Rights Movement. NOI mosques offered meals to civil rights protestors and opened grocery stores and restaurants in predominantly Black areas to promote economic well-being and food security. Unlike calas and macaroni pie, it’s unclear who created the bean pie recipe. Instead, the bean pie’s legacy is woven into the history of the NOI and civil rights, stretching far beyond Detroit to cities such as Atlanta, Chicago, and Los Angeles.
Health and Heritage: Reclaiming a Balanced Diet
Barbecued pork or fried chicken served with a heaping side of mac and cheese or creamy potato salad, sweet tea and peach cobbler - these Southern classics, loaded with as much history as flavor, have become comfort foods for Americans from all over. But a study published Tuesday in The Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that Southern cuisine isn't serving African-Americans, whose ancestors imagined and perfected it, very well.
The Southern diet may be at the center of a tangled web of reasons why black people in America are more prone to hypertension than white people. Their goal: to figure out why black Americans are at greater risk for high blood pressure. Over the course of the study, 46 percent of black participants and 33 percent of white participants developed hypertension - and diet seemed to explain much of the disparity. Black participants were much more likely than white participants to eat a Southern-style diet, which the researchers defined as one that heavily features fried foods, organ meats and processed meats, dairy, sugar-sweetened beverages and bread. And this diet was more strongly correlated with hypertension than any other factor the researchers measured, including participants' levels of stress and depression, exercise habits, income or education level.
Approximately 75 percent of black men and women develop high blood pressure by their mid-50s, compared with 55 percent of white men and 40 percent of white women of the same age. A diet high in fat, salt and sugar would increase the risk of hypertension for anyone, of any race. African Americans are more likely to be diagnosed with some chronic diseases, such as diabetes, than Americans of other races. An improved diet could reduce the negative effects of many of these diseases, specifically obesity and diabetes. These nutrient patterns align with cultural food preferences for soul food dishes that have been passed through generations via recipes and preparation techniques.
Thomas LaVeist, a dean and professor of health policy and management at Tulane University, says "the traditional African-American Southern diet was really designed for survival. African-Americans were not able to access a balanced, nutritious diet during slavery and during Jim Crow. What they had was organ meats and parts of slaughtered animals that others didn't eat, and greens they grew themselves. And what they did is take those scraps and turn it into what's now an internationally renowned cuisine." Food historian Adrian Miller, "Southern food, the way it's traditionally prepared, has been high in sodium, sugar and fat." "What I've been trying to promote is moderation. So, not rejecting soul food, but remembering that some of the heavier stuff was first conceived of as celebration food - we're not meant to eat them every day," says Miller, the author of The President's Kitchen Cabinet: The Story of the African Americans Who Have Fed Our First Families, from the Washingtons to the Obamas. "And maybe studies like this are an opportunity for us to revisit the core roots of this African heritage food that's based on vegetables: greens, sweet potato and beans.
The sweet potato casserole is another example of an adaptation made during slavery that increased the sugar content of a previously healthy dish.