When the Montgomery Bus Boycott kicked off in December 1955, demand for equality and outrage may have fueled the action, but food fueled the solution.
The idea of food as nourishment took on a whole new meaning during “High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America,” a Netflix documentary that Indiana University Northwest hosted a showing of on February 20 in its Berglund Auditorium. The documentary, from which a small crowd viewed excerpts before sampling a veritable cornucopia of African Diasporic dishes, follows the evolution of African and African American cuisine by concentrating on the social and economic impact of food, said James Wallace, the school’s Diversity, Equity and Multicultural Affairs director.
“Black Philanthropy and the importance of food during the Civil Rights movement is a huge topic,” Wallace said. “The Montgomery Bus Boycotts were literally funded by plates being sold in barbershops and hair salons because people had to buy the cars and the gas to take workers to their jobs every day. Another one is the Black Panthers, who started the People’s Free Food program in 1969, and that was the precursor to the breakfast programs that public schools have today. There are also the bean pies that celebrate the Black Muslim movement.
“Everyone has to eat, so this is the way for the community to come together, and this activism continues to this day.”
Bessie House-Soremekun, a professor of African-American Diaspora Studies for the school, said that although bean pies can be found in many different cultures and didn’t necessarily originate with Black Muslims, the fact that they absorbed them into their culture shows food’s historical connection.
“It shows how communities have indigenized, how they’ve incorporated food into their way of life,” House-Soremekun said. “It’s inter-disciplinary, bringing in political order and philanthropy on a small scale together; when you think of philanthropy, we’ve become so accustomed to thinking about it on this grand scale when really, these small acts are what really fuels change. It’s such a wonderful counter-narrative, and I hope we have more discourses about it in the future.”
Food philanthropy often gives way to entrepreneurship as well, Wallace added, recalling a woman who took her baked goods into a barbershop to see if what she was making was any good. Once people saw that selling food was an option, they were applying for microgrants to get businesses off the ground.
“Think about Big Daddy’s BBQ (of Gary): He started as a food truck at the flea market on Cleveland. Now, he has two locations, and he’s always giving back to his community,” Wallace said.
The sampling menu after the show was catered by J’s Breakfast Club on Broadway in Gary and included everything from the simple fufu, a root dough used to sop up a stew, to seafood gumbo, jambalaya, and red beans and rice, among the dishes. Students Ava Kingsley, of Portage; Jaelyn Donald, of Lansing, Illinois; and Eva Everett, of Chesterton, were more than happy to partake.
“It’s Black History Month, so we wanted to show our support,” Donald said. “I enjoyed the movie, and it’s good to learn about the culture.”
Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.