An Often Hidden, Historical Perspective on Black Chefs

“Culinary injustice is the annihilation of our food voices—past, present and foreseeable future.”-Michael Tweety

Presented by: Demarra Gardner, Change Agent Consulting

Our national palate owes a vast debt to African-American cooks and chefs who’ve largely

been whitewashed from the history books.-Trevor Hughes, USA Today

Starting with the Facts

● For hundreds of years, slave-owning white families depended upon African-Americans to grow, prepare and serve their food.

● Despite their impact being glossed over by major media outlets, people of African descent have been playing a major role in America’s history since the 17th century.

● From the early 1900s through Civil Rights, black chefs struggled to find their way out of these canned perceptions of servitude and innate cooking ability.

● The work of a chef was considered a domestic trade up until 1977, when the American Culinary Foundation lobbied the government to make it a professional trade.

That change in designation becomes profoundly important because throughout our culinary history, black and brown

people have been the unseen tastemakers of a nation that only recently caught on that food and culture were intertwined, and

that the chef was critical in this relationship.-Therese Nelson, NYC-based private chef and founder of the social network Black

Culinary History

Starting with the Facts● From the early 1900s through Civil Rights, black chefs struggled to find their way out of

canned perceptions of servitude and innate cooking ability. ● They branched out into other areas, including cookbook writing, cooking programs on

the radio and television, and owning high-end restaurants and cooking schools. ● Black chefs were lost again as the post-Civil Rights movement replaced

non-credentialed black men and women with degreed culinary students who were primarily white.

● Many African Americans refused to enter the cooking trade because of family pressure, as well as the ghost of early stereotypes of black domestics doing “slave work.”

A Quick Timeline

1680s-1860s: Early Black Chefs in the American South

1800-1900: Free Chefs of Color—The Caterers and Cookbook Authors

1900-1990: Up from Servitude on to TV

1990-2015: Post-Modern to Obama Era

1680s-1860s: Early Black Chefs in the American South

● This generation saw great black chefs that were both enslaved and free—including the head cooks of the households of George Mason, Andrew Jackson, & James Madison.

● On the outskirts of slavery were women like Ms. Lucy and her husband, a baker and pastry chef of renown in late 18th-century Annapolis.

● Several black chefs in New Orleans and Mobile were sent to France for a culinary education.

● The domestic slave trade pushed black cooks further South and West, and by extension North, as African Americans escaped to freedom after emancipation to join established black communities and chefs above the Mason-Dixon line.

● The relocation to the North permitted the establishment of black food-based businesses and the expansion of the early black middle-class.

1800-1900: Free Chefs of Color—The Caterers and Cookbook Authors

● Black people took their first efforts at owning and building restaurants and catering dynasties, while others wrote the first cookbooks.

● Malinda Russell, Abby Fisher, Rufus Estes, Tunis Campbell, and others demonstrated the first culinary and hospitality literature written by African Americans.

● One book, a guide to servants written by Robert Roberts, was so invaluable it was in the collection of Andrew Jackson—a slaveholder in a state where a Black man who could read was anathema.

● As the Civil War came to a close, Charleston South Carolina’s greatest chef, Nat Fuller, born into slavery but later emancipated, held a reunification and reconciliation dinner that brought together white and black Charlestonians for a rare integrated meal.

1900-1990: Up from Servitude on to TV

● The Great Migration brought on siloed opportunities in the South● Lena Richard: a black chef who was the first black radio and TV food personality. ● Austin Leslie’s Chez Helene near the French Quarter gave American TV its first black

restaurant sitcom, Frank’s Place, partly based on his life and experiences. ● Leah Chase and her husband founded Dooky Chase’s in the 1940s, and it became both a

nexus of the Civil Rights movement—like many black restaurants of the era—and a place where presidents go for mandatory culinary tourism.

● The Civil Rights movement brought many opportunities for the expression of black culture, but it led to a huge shift in how we engaged with soul food.

● Then people like B. Smith came on the scene representing the “upwardly mobile” and urban black middle- and upper-class.

1990-2015: Post-Modern to Obama Era

● Multiculturalism, Afrocentricism, and the gains of the Civil Rights movement led to a new generation of black chefs better equipped to contest the gentrification of America’s food scene.

● Patrick Clark of Tavern on the Green represented a new generation of African-American chefs. A guest star on Julia Child, he valued his classic French training and haute cuisine while never turning his back on his African-American roots. His son Preston is a chef at Lure in New York today.

● African and Caribbean chefs like Pierre Thiam have embraced African Americans while seeking to educate a wider audience about the foodways of Africa and her Diaspora.

● Carla Hall reigns on The Chew; Mashama Bailey has excelled at her Savannah restaurant The Grey.

● Nina Compton, Tanya Holland, Jennifer Booker, sushi master Marissa Bragert, and other black women chefs are transforming how the entire American food scene perceives both the African American and female chef.

Black cooks who sought to establish their own restaurants after Emancipation still faced legal discrimination through Jim Crow laws that effectively confined them to certain neighborhoods,

limiting their exposure to the broader population. Then, over the years, running a kitchen became something that largely required a

college degree, further limiting the options of black men and women who had historically trained at the heels of their elders.

That’s why, he argues, there’s few black celebrity chefs today even though stereotypical African-American foods have been

appropriated and copied for generations.-Michael Twitty, Afroculinaria blogger and author of the forthcoming book

Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African-American Culinary History in the Old South

...Systemic racism in the world of Southern food and public discourse not your past epithets are what really piss me off. There is so much press and so much activity around Southern food and yet

the diversity of people of color engaged in this art form and telling and teaching its history and giving it a future are often passed up or disregarded. Gentrification in our cities, the lack of

attention to Southern food deserts often inhabited by the non-elites that aren’t spoken about, the ignorance and ignoring of voices beyond a few token Black cooks/chefs or being called on to speak

to our issues as an afterthought is what gets me mad. In the world of Southern food, we are lacking a diversity of voices and that does not just mean Black people—or Black perspectives! We are

surrounded by culinary injustice where some Southerners take credit for things that enslaved Africans and their descendants played key roles in innovating. Barbecue, in my lifetime, may go the way of the Blues and the banjo….a relic of our culture that whisps away. That tragedy rooted in the unwillingness to give African American barbecue masters and other cooks an equal chance at the platform is far more galling than you saying “nigger,” in childhood ignorance or emotional rage or social whimsy. Your barbecue is my West African babbake, your fried chicken, your red rice, your

hoecake, your watermelon, your black eyed peas, your crowder peas, your muskmelon, your tomatoes, your peanuts, your hot peppers, your Brunswick stew and okra soup, benne, jambalaya, hoppin’ john, gumbo, stewed greens and fat meat—have inextricable ties to the plantation South

and its often Black Majority coming from strong roots in West and Central Africa.-Michael Twitty’s Open Letter to Paula Dean

“Kitchens are not separate from the race distinctions that have been going on for

generations in all industries.” -Chef Marcus Samuelson

“People didn’t expect me to do anything but Asian food, but it was equally bad, if not worse, for my black friends in the culinary scene. They were expected to just do soul or Southern food, but they resisted that label as we all had French training. The emphasis was on proving you had those skills and weren’t just cooking ‘what you knew.’ Meanwhile, white people came in and started doing what those chefs didn’t want to get pigeonholed doing, and got extra credit for it.”

-Ed Lee, a Korean-American chef of Louisville’s Magnolia

“Black hands — enslaved and free — wove the fabric of social life in the nation’s capital, and black people, widely considered by whites as inherently bred for servitude, were

integral to cementing a white family’s social status as an elite household. Our presidential families were no exception. Many presidents went out of their way to

reassure the public that they loved the homey dishes prepared by their African-American cooks, though they rarely dignified these cooks by referring to them by their full names.

Our country owes a debt of gratitude to those rarely remembered workers who helped set the tastes of the country. Some of those African-American cooks served as civil rights advocates, whispering in the president’s ear, helping to shape national policy about

slavery and Jim Crow laws.”-Adrian Miller, The President’s Kitchen Cabinet

Hercules aka “Uncle Harkless”

● Chef of George Washington’s in Mt. Vernon● Martha Washington's grandson, George Washington Parke Custis,

remembered Hercules as "highly accomplished and proficient in the culinary arts as could be found in the United States." Seale called him "the commander of the kitchen. He did everything, all the souffles, almond pudding, trifles, fricassee chicken, kidney, etc."

● He had eight assistants — stewards, butlers, undercooks, waiters and he cooked in a huge fireplace — hearth cooking.

● He is described as being immaculate and impeccable. Harris, the historian, says he was noted for being a "dandy." He walked through the streets of Philadelphia in a velvet waistcoat and a gold-handled cane. He probably got the money to buy his clothes by selling leftovers and kitchen waste, a privilege sometimes given those in special positions.

James Hemings● Thought to be the best trained chef in America of his time, and essentially one of the first

to blend the best of French technique with American ingredients and flavors.● Hemings was the son of an enslaved mulatto woman named Elizabeth Hemings and a

white father, John Wayles — who was also the father of Jefferson's wife, Martha. James Hemings and his relatives became Jefferson's property as part of Martha's inheritance.

● When Jefferson sailed to France in 1784 to become America's trade minister, he brought the 19-year-old Hemings with him for an express purpose: to become a French-trained chef.

● Paris was then the culinary capital of the world, and Hemings spent five years in the city, mastering the art of French cuisine and apprenticing with a caterer, a pastry chef and even a chef of the Prince de Conde, who was known for the splendor of his table.

● "James Hemings received his freedom in the same year that Hercules escaped," Conrad says. "Hemings and Hercules are both in Philadelphia at the same time. In a city with only 210 slaves, surely Hercules and James Hemings were each aware of the other's existence. It would not surprise me in the least if James' freedom may have helped inspire Hercules to take on his own freedom."

“James Hemings should be a national name. Because he was the best. He wasn’t just a black

chef. He wasn’t just a slave chef. He was the best chef.”

-Michael Twitty, Afroculinaria Blog

Anne Northrup● Anne cooked in 1825. She predates what we call soul food, which is

Southern, rooted in slavery. Was headed to a cooking job for a few weeks when her husband was kidnapped in 1841.

● Moved in with Madame Eliza Jumel, the flamboyant second wife of Vice President Aaron Burr.

● Her recipes predated the oldest known African American cookbook.● “Anne is Northern, free and cooked with ingredients that predate

soul food by decades,” Tonya Hopkins said.● “Northern American food is really the result of a double Creolization.

The first Creolization, or mixture, happened in the Caribbean by the fusion of Africans, Asian, European, Spanish and indigenous foodways. The second phase happened in the Northern states with free blacks (infused with Caribbean ancestry), First Nation people, English, Dutch, German, French and others,” said Hopkins, a food historian.

“Anne lived and worked at United States Hotel in Saratoga Springs, New York,and, according to

several sources, was a “highly regarded chef and kitchen manager.”

-Jane Lancaster, Brown University Professor & Event Lecturer

Dolly Johnson When 23rd president Benjamin Harrison and his wife, Caroline, fired their French chef and hired Dolly Johnson, a free black woman who had worked for them in Indianapolis, the move made national headlines. This is in jarring contrast with the recent headlines we’ve seen asking, “Where are all of the black chefs?” Then, as now, they were there doing their thing, hiding in plain sight.

—Adrian Miller, Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine, One Plate at a Time

Vietta GarrVietta Garr worked as Harry Truman's cook in Independence, Mo. When Truman became president, he requested that Garr come to work in Washington, D.C., not as a cook but to instruct his staff on how to cook the "Missouri way." She was the granddaughter of Emily Fisher, an ex-slave who ran a hotel on Independence Square.

Zephyr WrightPresident Johnson’s wife hired her when Wright was a home economics student at the historically black Wiley College in Texas. She cooked for the Johnsons for 27 years in Texas and Washington, D.C. President Johnson's awareness of the difficulties Wright experienced traveling through the segregated South — the hardship and humiliation of not being served in restaurants on the road, the difficulty of finding accommodations — are believed to have influenced his work on civil rights reform and legislation.

This presidential love of comfort food often created tension in the kitchen between the classically trained European chefs and

the “home-trained” black cooks who consistently won the hearts of the First Diners and their guests. The White House

table featured such soulful favorites as fried chicken, greens, okra and sweet potato pie next to consomme and blancmange.

Many presidents chose to mediate the tension by having the black cooks make the private meals while the European chefs

handled grand entertainments.-Adrian Miller, Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine, One Plate at a Time

Black Chefs & Civil Rights “For decades after emancipation, frustrated civil rights leaders who couldn’t get an audience in the Oval Office would bend the ear of African American presidential cooks with the fervent hope that they would do the same when the president came to the dining table.” -Adrian Miller, The President’s Kitchen Cabinet

● Maid and part-time cook Lizzie McDuffie served as an effective go-between during the Franklin Roosevelt administration and even hit the campaign trail in 1936 to bolster her boss’s electoral chances with African American voters in key cities.

● Zephyr Wright, Lyndon Johnson’s longtime family cook, became a face of the civil rights movement because Johnson used her humiliating Jim Crow experiences to sway reluctant congressmen to support the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Johnson also trusted Wright as the equivalent of an “insta-poll” by regularly asking her how he was doing with his African American constituency.

Demarra GardnerChange Agent Consulting

www.changeagentconsult.com (web)269-459-2565 (office)

demarra@changeagentconsult.com (email)

And the Present...● In 2015, the James Beard Chef and Restaurant Awards semifinalist

list included four black chefs (out of almost 420 nominees), Food & Wine’s Best New Chefs list yielded zero, and Forbes’ “30 Under 30″ food category highlighted none.

● Dating perceptions and even some family pressures have shaped negative views of African Americans working as chefs.

● There are cases of typecasting in the industry that exist today like Chef Tanya Holland who left her show at a top network because she was asked to be more "sassy."

● And there are tons of chefs out there rocking the culinary world!

Angela Shelf Medearis

● Chef● Author● Cultural Historian● Regular Talk Show Host Guest● Created BOOK BOOSTERS, INC., a 501(c)3

non-profit organization that provides support for community literacy and health projects

JEFF HENDERSON

● He realized his calling for cooking while serving a 10-year prison sentence on drug charges

● Owns a catering, publishing, and consulting company

● Author● Talk Show Host

BARBARA ‘B. SMITH’

● Hosts “The B. Smith” and “Thank You Dan Show” alongside her husband on SiriusXM Radio

● Serves as a culinary resource for the State Department (National Chefs Corps)

● Has done various TV commercials and product endorsements

● Has graced the covers of magazines (such as Mademoiselle whose color barrier she broke in 1976)

● Has a hit show on NBC called “B. Smith with Style” Has her own home collection with Bed Bath & Beyond

BRYANT TERRY

● Food Justice Activist● Author of 4 Afro-vegan cookbooks● Has a web series Urban Organic● Graduated from the Natural Gourmet

Institute for Health and Culinary Arts in New York City

● Has a masters degree in American History from NYU

● Food and Social Policy Fellows

RON DUPRAT

● “Top Chef” competitor ● Supports organizations like No Hungry Kids, the Black

Culinary Alliance (BCA), Real Men Charities Inc., the American Culinary Federation, International Youth Foundation, and FLOTUS’ Let’s Move against childhood obesity

● Authored a book titled “My Journey Through Cooking.”

MARVIN WOODS

● Emmy Award nominated ● Published two popular cookbooks (“Home

Plate Cooking” and “The New Low Country”)

● First chef to kick off FLOTUS’ Let’s Move initiative

● Food Education Program Droppin’ Knowledge with Chef Marvin Woods: http://www.chefmarvinwoods.com/dk.html

GERRY GARVIN

● Chef● Author● One Bite At A Time Foundation founder ● The non-profit boasts a Culinary Boot

Camp mentoring program for teenagers that teaches youth about the cooking world as well as hospitality

JOE RANDALL

● Has worked in the culinary world for half a century Founder and teacher at Chef Joe Randall’s Cooking School

● Founding board member of the Southern Foodways Alliance

● Part of the American Culinary Federation

TIFFANY DERRY

● Top Chef Competitor● TV Personality● Art Institute’s Culinary Arts Program spokesperson● Member of Les Dames d’Escoffier (an organization

dedicated to the philanthropic work of women leaders in the world of food and hospitality)

● Owns Tiffany Derry Concepts

GOVIND ARMSTRONG

● Restaurateur establishing nationwide chains like Table 8 and 8 oz Burger Bar

● Apprenticed under Wolfgang Puck at the age of 13

● TV appearances on ‘Iron Chef America’ and ‘Top Chef’

● Authored the cookbook “Small Bites, Big Nights”

HAILE THOMAS

● In 2009, she started a YouTube channel, Kids Can Cook, with her four-year-old sister Nia

● Youngest graduate from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, trained as a certified integrative nutrition health coach

● Public speaker and has done numerous TV appearances● Created one of the winning entries in the first White House Kids'

State Dinner, hosted by Michelle Obama as part of her Let's Move! campaign

● Founder of The HAPPY Organization which brings nutrition education to youth through cooking classes, summer camps, and in-school programs

● Partners with the non-profit organization Harlem Grown to provide education in urban farming, sustainability, and nutrition

Cool Movements Across the State/Country

● Detroit Grown & Made● Careers through culinary arts program ● Black Foodie● Black Chefs Summer Series

So What Should We Do?

● Stop asking “Where are the black chefs?” ● Acknowledge the obvious presence of many chefs of color, then recognize that

those chefs and culinary figures have a path fraught with social and cultural walls.

● Understand the forces of race and class are the uneasy companions of black cooks.

● We must own “our” history, and work to install more voices that preserve and celebrate the complexity of black culinary narratives.

“I’m sick and tired of this reductive conversation about where black chefs are, why we don’t exist in the food world, why we aren’t viable, profitable chefs. It’s a bullshit premise built on dishonesty

and the very question is disingenuous. We built American cooking, only our work was done when no one cared about food as culture.”

-Therese Nelson

Resourceshttp://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/01/19/african-american-cooks-chefs-presidents/96157792/

http://www.jetmag.com/life/now-were-cooking/black-chefs-history-patrick-clark/

https://beta.prx.org/stories/33186

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/28/famous-black-chefs_n_5036401.html

http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/10/17/449447335/behind-the-founding-foodie-a-french-trained-chef-bound-by-slavery

Resourceshttp://www.npr.org/2008/02/19/18950467/hercules-and-hemings-presidents-slave-chefs

http://firstwefeast.com/eat/2015/05/roundtable-black-chefs-in-america

https://www.southernfoodways.org/behind-the-white-house-kitchen-door/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/african-american-cooks-in-the-white-house-hiding-in-plain-sight/2014/06/02/c54cba10-e76a-11e3-afc6-a1dd9407abcf_story.html?utm_term=.c550f8c95d98

http://zesterdaily.com/cooking/culinary-history-you-missed-in-12-years-a-slave/

Demarra GardnerChange Agent Consulting

www.changeagentconsult.com (web)269-459-2565 (office)

demarra@changeagentconsult.com (email)

Patrick ClarkRecognized as one of the best chefs of his time, Patrick Clark rose to fame in the early 1980s. Growing up in the borough of Brooklyn, NY, Clark was initially inspired to cook by his father, who was also a chef. Clark enrolled in the hotel and restaurant program at New York City Technical Community College and refined his skills through stints at restaurants in London and France. While abroad, he was able to master French cuisine, and successfully inject it with the flavors who knew growing up in his father’s kitchen.As one of the first Black celebrity chefs, Clark broke out of the mold by focusing solely on soul food at a time when Black chefs were mostly known by their White counterparts for frying chicken and making collard greens. Bruce Wynn, a young Black pastry chef who worked with Clark, was quoted by the New York Times as saying: ”He lived the flavor that he grew up on, and he spread that flavor. He was very demanding, sometimes harsh, but he was constant. And the flavor never wavered.”Throughout his career, Clark received several honors, including the Grand Master Chef Award in 1988 and 1989, along with being named Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic Region at the esteemed annual James Beard Awards. He was well-respected and regarded by the Black and White culinary worlds alike as a dynamic, genius of sorts in the kitchen, as evident in a tribute book entitled, Cooking with Patrick Clark: A Tribute to a Man and His Cuisine (a must-read for all cooks). Like many of the greats, his life was cut short at the age of 42, due to congestive heart failure.