Food. Food is so many things. It is nourishment, sustenance, it fuels our bodies as we work, live, and play. It’s something that motivates us, a symbol of survival. But it is also so much more. Food is capable of satisfying not just our biological needs, but our spiritual ones too. Food brings people together, through both process and product. It’s the thing that gathers families around the table in celebration, and in memorial. It’s the centerpiece of romance, the fertilizer for budding relationships. And it’s what you bring to a friend, when they have experienced a tragedy. Food is the glue of society.

But it’s also a weapon.

The denial of food is an unmistakable act of aggression, and it is the base structure for societal inequity. Starvation is a completely preventable disease in America, but yet it persists as a threat to more than 44 million people. To face hunger isn’t merely a product of circumstance. To go hungry is to be abandoned by your community.

In the South, food has an especially complicated relationship to politics. In the land of plantations, Jim Crow, and indigenous removal, the American South has seen more than its fair share of foodway disruption. The massive influx of African influence brought in through the transatlantic slave trade, the tactless appropriation of indigenous crops and traditions, bound beneath the overeaching umbrella of European methods and mentalities, has made the history of Southern food a richly seasoned gumbo of unexpected flavors and ingredients. It makes for a heavy dish, served on a platter forged from racism, and with a side salad of civil disobedience.

Rachel Merritt Jones has made a picnic of her scholarly endeavors this semester, diving headfirst—or rather mouth-first—into the rich history of African Diasporic foodways and traditions in the American South. She is a graduate student here at UNCW, and has dedicated much of her research to studying the relationship between food and African American history. Recently, she embarked on an academic survey of Natchez Mississippi, to explore the oral and culinary traditions of her home-town community there. Today, Rachel is here to talk about that experience, and to share what she learned—and tasted—while immersed in her delicious pursuits.