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Black smoke by adrian miller5/11/2023 Some of the most well-known joints in the country are run by African Americans. Do you know that Rodney Scott’s book (“Rodney Scott’s World of BBQ”) is the first book by an African-American barbecuer published by major press in 30 years? It makes me mad because it just shows how insular the publishing world, when it comes to food media, can be. By the time you get to the mid-19th century, African Americans are barbecue’s go-to cooks. After Emancipation, African Americans were barbecue’s most effective ambassadors in terms of spreading it around the country. … And African Americans used barbecue as resistance by feeding Union soldiers. It was fascinating that, during slavery, so many of the nearly successful slave rebellions were planned over barbecue. So, in the midst of these horrible conditions, barbecue was often tied to joyous times: the laying by of the crops, the harvest. It was often on weekends and special occasions. In my research, I saw how barbecue and Blackness got wedded over time.īarbecue only happened during slavery when the work schedule slowed on the plantation to allow this type of cooking because barbecue takes time. There hasn’t been a book to really trace how we got from the earliest days of barbecue to where we got to now, especially from an African-American perspective. Miller and his work has been featured in two recent Netflix series “Chef’s Table: BBQ” and “High on the Hog: How African Cuisine Transformed America.” He spoke by telephone from his home in Denver.Ī.
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