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Welcome to the Southern Foodways Alliance -- an institute of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture with headquarters at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Mississippi. The Southern Foodways Alliance documents and celebrates the diverse food cultures of the American South. We set a common table where black and white, rich and poor -- all who gather-- may consider our history and our future in a spirit of reconciliation. |
Southern Food in Black and White October 7-10, 2004 Southern Foodways Alliance From this year's symposium, Southern Food in Black and White, hear civil rights activist, Reverend Will D. Campbell. The seventh annual Southern Foodways Symposium will be held October 7-10, 2004, on the campus of the University of Mississippi in Oxford. This year we explore race through the lens of foodways. We will study, debate, and celebrate the South's shared food culture by way of events that focus upon race relations. The SFA believes that racial chasms can be bridged when we recognize our common humanity across a table piled high with bowls of collard greens, platters of cornbread. We believe that food is our region's greatest shared creation. And we see food as a unifier in a diverse region, as a means by which we may address the issues that have long vexed our homeland. As with previous symposia, this event provides opportunities for cooks, chefs, food writers, and inquisitive eaters to come to a better understanding of Southern cuisine and Southern culture. Lectures, held in Johnson Commons, at the heart of the University of Mississippi campus, are complemented by informal lunches and dinners served in and around Oxford. In keeping with our tradition of offering attendees practical instruction in the collection and dissemination of oral histories, Rachel Lawson will share her work with veterans of the Nashville Sit-in Movement. This class, staged on Thursday prior to the official opening of the symposium, will be free of charge to the first twenty registrants. This year we screen two SFA-produced films, underwritten by the Fertel Foundation and directed by Joe York. The first, On Flavor, tells the story of Ed Scott, the first African American catfish farmer in the Mississippi Delta. The second, a tribute to the women who fed the Civil Rights Movement, highlights Martha Hawkins of Montgomery, Alabama, a modern-day steward of the Welcome Table. Music continues to be integral to our gatherings. Olu Dara, a native of Mississippi, will lead his Natchezsippi Dance Band in a Saturday afternoon concert that pays homage to Southern icons like prickly okra and juicy strawberries, not to mention fabled writers like Zora Neal Hurston. And then there's the food. Among the highlights will be sandwiches of Coca-Cola brisket, made with pastured beef; Mississippi catfish, sheathed in a cornmeal mantle; whole hog barbecue, cooked by a North Carolina master; light-as-a-feather biscuits from Knoxville; tender-as-a-mother's love grillades from New Orleans; and a quartet of fried chickens, cooked by exemplars of the frying art. Keep in mind: The Delta Divertissement is back. Over the course of a twenty-four-hour sojourn to the town of Greenwood, Mississippi, this quick-to-sell-out prequel to the symposium offers an opportunity to explore the land that gave birth to heroes of the Civil Rights Movement like Fannie Lou Hamer. What's more, we'll talk tamales, hear tales of rabbit hunting in canebrakes, dance to downhome blues, and savor what happens when a James Beard Award-winning chef – and Mississippi native – Ann Cashion sets her mind to feeding her kinsmen and kinswomen. CLICK FOR MORE INFO ABOUT THE DIVERTISSEMENT. Host for the event is the Southern Foodways Alliance at the University of Mississippi's Center for the Study of Southern Culture. Contributors to our efforts include Biltmore Estate Wine Company, Bottletree Bakery, City Grocery, the R&B Feder Charitable Foundation for the Beaux Arts, Grassroots Wine, Jim ‘N Nick's Bar-B-Q, the Mississippi Humanities Council, the Oxford Tourism Council, and the Yoknapatawpha Arts Council. In honor of our new sponsor, Burt's Beef, the SFA will now endeavor to serve pasture-raised beef, poultry, and pork. Thursday
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Fritz Blank has degrees in dairy husbandry, dairy science, medical technology, and clinical microbiology. He is the chef-owner of Deux Cheminées in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Will Campbell, a native of Amite County, Mississippi, is a preacher, author, and activist. Among his books is Brother to a Dragonfly. Ann Cashion, a native of Jackson, Mississippi, is the chef and coowner of Cashion's Eat Place in Washington, D.C. The James Beard Foundation named her best chef in the Mid-Atlantic region for 2004. Leah Chase is the chef of Dooky Chase in New Orleans, Louisiana. She was the first president of SFA and received SFA's 2000 Lifetime Achievement Award. She is the author of And Still I Cook. Mildred Council, known to her many admirers as Mama Dip, is proprietor of -- you guessed it -- Mama Dip's in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She is the author of Mama Dip's Kitchen. The Culinary Arts Institute at the Mississippi University for Women in Columbus is directed by Sarah Labensky. The institute offers a four-year baccalaureate degree in culinary arts. Students prepare for employment in diverse areas of food studies, such as food journalism, food arts, wellness, and entrepreneurship. John Currence, the chef-owner of City Grocery in Oxford, Mississippi, is the backbone of the symposium. Nearly every morsel of food that lands on a plate will emerge from his kitchen. Olu Dara, a native of Mississippi, is a veteran of the loft jazz scene in New York. His album, In the World from Natchez to New York, is the official 2004 soundtrack of the SFA. Lolis Eric Elie is a columnist for the Times-Picayune of New Orleans. An SFA founding member, he is also the editor of Cornbread Nation 2: The United States of Barbecue. Beth Ann Fennelly is an assistant professor of English at the University of Mississippi. Her newest book of poetry is Tender Hooks. Nikki Giovanni, a native of Knoxville, Tennessee, is University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech. Her most recent volume of poetry is Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea. Tom Hanchett, historian at the Levine Museum of the New South in Charlotte, North Carolina, is the author of Sorting Out the New South City: Race, Class, and Urban Development in Charlotte, 1875 - 1975. Trudier Harris is a professor of English at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She is coeditor of the Oxford Companion to African American Literature and author of the memoir Summer Snow: Reflections from a Black Daughter of the South. Martha Hawkins is the 2004 recipient of the SFA's Ruth Fertel Keeper of the Flame Award. She is the cook and owner of Martha's Place in Montgomery, Alabama and the founder of Martha Hawkins Ministries. Lynn Hewlett, a native of Taylor, Mississippi, is a champion barbecue pitmaster who owns and operates one of the South's most fabled catfish houses, Taylor Grocery. The Jones Sisters are a gospel ensemble from Lafayette County, Mississippi. Their first album is titled Life's Not Easy: The Jones Sisters at Sun Studios. Guelel Kumba, a native of Senegal, and Slade Lewis, a native of Mississippi, are fixtures of the Oxford music scene who gig with the likes of Afrissippi and Wiley and the Checkmates. Bernard Lafayette is an ordained minister who earned his EdD from Harvard University. He was a cofounder of SNCC and a leader of the Nashville sit-ins. Rachel Lawson works for the Nashville Public Library. In concert with SFA, she has been compiling oral histories of the Nashville sit-in moment. Austin Leslie is the fry cook at Jacques-Imo's, a New Orleans restaurant owned by Jacques Leonardi. Featured in the seminal book Creole Feast, Leslie is one of the grand men of the Southern restaurant scene. Adrian Miller, former special assistant to President Clinton and deputy director of the President's Initiative for One America, is director of outreach for the Bell Policy Center in Denver, Colorado. He serves on the SFA board and is the programming chair. Ed Mitchell of Wilson, North Carolina, is proprietor of Mitchell's Ribs, Chicken, and BBQ. Check out the profile of him by Peter Kaminsky in Cornbread Nation 2. Diane McWhorter is the author of the Pulitzer Prize winning history Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution. Scott Peacock is the chef at Watershed in Decatur, Georgia. Along with his mentor, Edna Lewis, he is the author of The Gift of Southern Cooking. Audrey Petty is an assistant professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is at work on All the Underneath, her first novel. Donna Pierce is a Chicago-based journalist at work on a book on African American culinary contributions. Dori Sanders of York County, South Carolina, is a farmer and writer. Her novel Clover won the Lillian Smith Book Award for "elucidating the condition of racial and social inequity and proposing a vision of justice and human understanding." Martha Stamps is the chef of Martha's at the Plantation in Nashville, Tennessee. She is the author of Martha's at the Plantation: Seasonal Recipes from Belle Meade. Susan Tucker teaches at Tulane in New Orleans, Louisiana, and is the author of Telling Memories among Southern Women. Charles Reagan Wilson is the director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. He is coeditor of the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. William Winter, a Governor of Mississippi, is the spirit behind the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation at the University of Mississippi. Joe York is SFA's resident filmmaker. His first film, Saving Seeds, was a finalist for the Golden Snail Award at the Slow Food on Film Competition in Bra, Italy. Rafia Zafar is the chair of African and Afro-American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. She is the author of We Wear the Mask: African Americans Write American Literature, 1760-1870. |
Burt's Beef The Fertel Foundation Glory Foods Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey Viking Range White Lily |
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