Character isn’t made by machine. #68

SUMMER 2018 • A QUARTERLY PUBLICATION FROM THE SOUTHERN FOODWAYS ALLIANCE • $7

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9065-06 MMADV_6x9_CharacterMachine_AD.indd 1 5/30/18 3:30 PM career as a cookbook collaborator. In the Louisiana with Marcelle as a guide, they late 1960s, Sarah Brash, a researcher for knew the subject was worthy of its own Time-Life’s Foods of the World series called book. After Time-Life published Amer- the Picayune. She needed help researching ican Cooking: Creole and Acadian in 1971, Acadian foodways for a cookbook. Marcelle left journalism for Command- “I didn’t even know I lived in Cajun er’s Palace. She learned the intricacies Country,” Marcelle told me, laughing at of the restaurant industry, working in her twenty-five-year-old self. ‘That was the front of the house, keeping invento- before Paul Prudhomme said there was ry, and catering. In 1984, she began a such a thing as Cajun Country. And I told column, Cooking Creole, for the them I knew everything there was to Times-Picayune. know about it, and they could hire me, In the months since I traveled to Thi- and they did.” bodaux, nine other female food journal- Marcelle, a native of St. Martinville in ists have opened their homes and offices the Bayou Teche region, proved the to me. They have given me time, spare perfect choice. With a photographer, she batteries, cookbooks, and brownie traveled through New Orleans, eating mixes. They have cooked for me. And oysters at Acme and visiting Ella Brennan they have shared stories of their lives at Commander’s Palace. In Cajun country, and extraordinary careers. As a young she procured pigs for boucheries and woman documenting Southern food- crawfish for boils. When Marcelle joined ways, I am grateful for the paths they the project, the Time-Life editors carved, and for the opportunity to follow thought of Cajun and Creole food as a their leads. chapter in a larger book about Southern food. After seeing and tasting south Annemarie Anderson is SFA’s oral historian.

Gravy is a publication of the Southern JOHN T. EDGE, Editor-in-Chief Foodways Alliance, a donor supported [email protected] FEATURES institute of the Center for the Study 02 First Helpings MARY 62 BETHThe LASSETER,Queer Pleasures Publisher of Southern Culture at the University [email protected] of Tammy Wynette’s of Mississippi. 28 08 Mixed History SARA CAMPCooking MILAM, Editor The SFAOsayi documents, Endolyn studies, and [email protected] Mayukh Sen Italian Heaven explores the diverse food cultures of OSAYI ENDOLYN, Deputy Editor Justin Nystrom the changing American South. We reframe14 The dialogues Rise about and the Fall region of and [email protected] 65 Barbekue catalyze the conversations South’s aboutACP racism, Kings DANIELLE Daniel A. SCRUGGS, Vaughn Image Editor gender inequity, class discrimination, [email protected] 42 and otherGustavo challenges. Arellano We curate a The Taking of beloved community that gains strength RICHIE 72 MarcelleSWANN, Designer Bienvenu’s and22 voiceDare at a well-setto Look table. [email protected] Cajun Chronicles Freret Street KATHERINE W. STEWART, Your donationW. Ralph makes Eubanks our work possible. SFA Oral History Maurice Carlos Ruffin Fact Checker Visit southernfoodways.org to make a donation or become a member. MONIQUE LABORDE, Intern ABOVE: Sandy Ha Nguyen, executive director of Coastal 52 Communities Consulting, Inc. (CCC) speaks to a group of An Industry’sSFA MEMBERSHIP fisherfolk IS OPENin Buras, TO Louisiana. ALL. NOTPhoto Aby MEMBER?Claire Bangser.

Annemarie Anderson HeartbeatJoin us at southernfoodways.org • [email protected] • 662-915-3368 Simi Kang Cover photo by CLAIRE BANGSER Summer 2018 | 73 W before I’m a cook. Ask my husband.) So I I’m an eater. (And I’m 2 offer advice to writers of food or drink, to chance the get I When me. inspire whose story will surprise, or delight, or a new light. Or introduce me to a person been, or help me see a familiar place in haven’t I place a to me take writer a rather I’d So mine. from different be delectable, even your crispy—they might tively means nothing. Your savory, your effec it so and everyone, to different reading for. Delicious means something I’m what usually not that’s reading, gramming theme, Food andLiterature. take extra pleasure in this year’s SFA pro First Helpings

I care how food tastes. But when I’m in Buras, Louisiana Vietnamese restaurant Lucky Ryan, a | southernfoodways.org GO AHEAD, SURPRISE ME around. I’m a reader before reader a I’m around. way other the not food, to me brought ords definitely a reader - -

—Sara Camp Milam surface. the to tumbling stop never will but ensures that rich and complex stories all it and triumphant, sometimes tragic, it their home. This shifting is sometimes shifts beneath the feet of those who make ground topographically.The even and evolving and adapting—demographically constantly is region the that us remind Louisiana, past, present, and future. They pages. Andthat’s intentional. these of focus primary the not They’re descriptions with precision and beauty. to novelists, who deliver those gustatory poets to critics from writers, are there And mine. to counter run tastes whose places aheadofflavors. and people put to them urge always I The features in this issue conjure South Of course, there are readers and editors

ClaireGutter Bangser credit

Tad BartlettGutter credit and novel, will publishRuffin’s fi rst One World House Random really oneofakind, thebest time. Barrow’s catfish was places Iusedtogoallthe in myheadthinkingabout I’m goingacross thecity anymore inNew Orleans? kitchen, that you can’tget restaurantparticular or What’s adish,from a 2019. January in the His writinghasalsoappeared a nonfiction columnistat the in creative writing. Ruffin is New OrleansMFA program graduate oftheUniversity of Maurice CarlosRuffin isa Know Louisiana Know Review and acontributingeditorto Quarterly Virginia Southerner EAST NEW ORLEANS NATIVE Massachusetts Review. Massachusetts LA Times LA We Cast a Shadow a Cast We FEATURED CONTRIBUTOR AROS RUI MAURIE , Kenyon Review Kenyon , magazine. The Bitter Bitter The ,

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we say hellowhenwe pass here anddon’tknow that when peoplecomedown of theworst thingsIseeis disadvantaged people.One to thecommunityand for how you cancontribute Have aplan to give back. you somuch.Beprepared unique place,anditcangive It’sas itiscomplex. sucha New Orleansisaswelcoming about moving tothecity? New Orleans andthinking someone whoisnotfrom What would you say to disappeared altogether. smaller, andothershave congregations have gotten Katrina, mostofthosechurch five orseven bucks.Since and cheese,cornbread,for with friedfish, peas,mac plates,’ aplate piledhigh ‘dinnerwould regularlyserve of itskind.Some churches more like oncea restaurant onceamonth.It’s I thoughtI’d seeanew the changeishappening. I’ve beennoticinghow rapidly It wasn’t onemoment, but in New Orleans? to writeaboutgentrification news itemthat motivated you Was there aspecific event or can getagoodmeal. bewhereyou house. That’ll their cousin’s houseoraunt’s a goodfriend.Hang around you want agoodmeal,make Andif more thanyou talk. little thingslike that. Listen important, sobeaware ofthe someone onthestreet. It’s they close. to gosomeplaces before have timeinmyschedule close withawhimper. Ihardly open withabigfanfareand and anotherisclosing.They oneplace isopening week, S 2018 week. Every Every | 3 First Helpings their freedom and go on to open shops of their own.

CP: Another interesting FROM BLACK HANDS TO component of your work is the use of sales ads for enslaved WHITE MOUTHS: CHARLESTON’S cooks. Can you tell me about these ads, how you found ENSLAVED COOKS them, and what you learned? KM: The ads were given to me by David Shields [of Kevin Mitchell, a chef and culinary instructor from Charleston, professions were closed off to the University of South South Carolina, earned his MA in Southern Studies from the blacks. And the professions Carolina]. These ads are University of Mississippi this spring. SFA foodways professor that were seen as more interesting because not only Catarina Passidomo advised Mitchell’s thesis, “From Black feminine—cooking and are they looking for specific Hands to White Mouths.” Here, a peek into his research. cleaning and sewing—were levels of skilled cooks, these the things that were left open skilled cooks were of course CATARINA PASSIDOMO: professional cooking for to blacks. That particular enslaved. Just the fact of You trace the lineage of enslaved and free people of lineage is important to me an ad being published in a black chefs and caterers color during the antebellum because it allows me to see newspaper for the sale of a in Charleston back to the period in Charleston. where I came from. human body.... I was able to BUD BREAK early nineteenth century. go through the ads and see Discuss the importance of KEVIN MITCHELL: A lot of CP: You highlight the ways those levels of cooks and in which some black cooks understand the amount of IN VIRGINIA used cooking as an avenue skill that each one of them to their freedom. But there had. There was a French are complexities, too. Can cook, a complete cook, and a kirsty harmon, the winemaker for you talk about Sally Seymour, pastry cook. So I was trying Blenheim Vineyards who studied microbiology a free woman of color who to decipher which were in college, pours rkatsiteli, her pineapple-scent- the most valuable to their ran a catering business and ed white wine made with grapes first grown in owned slaves? slaveholders and why. Those three types of cooks were the Republic of Georgia, and talks about how a KM: I discovered that because highly sought after by the side gig as a calligrapher led to her vocation. Over of the labor market in slaveholders. Being able to lunch at Gabriele Rausse Winery, on a creek bank Charleston at that particular have these particular cooks outside Charlottesville, Virginia, Ian Boden, chef time, those were the only gave the slaveholder a certain and owner of the Shack in nearby Staunton, plates people available to her. status, especially when they a riff on the Lao dish known as larb. It’s made Someone like Sally Seymour entertained guests. with Hickory King grits, Allan Benton’s bacon who would become free and from Tennessee, and dried shrimp from Louisiana. open up her own restaurant Through my research, it A rhubarb sorbet and a Stinson Vineyards late or pastry shop, of course, seems like the pastry cook harvest petit manseng, flush with tangerine and was the most valued and the needed laborers. She needed honey, follow cold fried chicken and a killed people to help her run that most skilled, because they lettuce salad tossed with fiddleheads. “French shop. And so someone like her not only dealt with the sweet was able to, in a sense, reap things, but they had to know winemakers now come here from Burgundy,” says those economic benefits to the savory side as well. They Peter Rausse, son of pioneering Virginia wine- having slave labor. Hopefully, also seemed to be the ones maker Gabriele Rausse. “In Burgundy they make some of those slaves would who trained other cooks Burgundy. Here, we can make anything and ev-

have been able to purchase Marta Locklear/Stocksy Mitchell; RIGHT: Courtesy of Kevin LEFT: behind them. erything.” —JTE

4 | southernfoodways.org Summer 2018 | 5 First Helpings SFA EVENTS For details and ticket information, visit southernfoodways.org JUL 12 AUG 12 AUG 13 Julian Rankin reads and signs 2018 Egerton Brown in the South Dinner Catfi sh Dreams at Square Books Award Ceremony Volume 2 OXFORD, MS NASHVILLE, TN NASHVILLE, TN AUG 16 SEP 10-11 OCT 11-13 SMOKE AND MIRRORS Barbecue Digest Southern Foodways 2018 Southern Foodways Volume 2 Graduate Symposium Fall Symposium MEMPHIS, TN OXFORD, MS OXFORD, MS barbecue nation, curated by Condensed Smoke, made in Kansas City the Atlanta History Center, charts a around 1900, promised: “This bottle will cultural timeline of this fabled American smoke a barrel of meat, cheaper, safer, craft. Twenty years in the making, the and quicker than the old way.” inclusive and expansive exhibit opened this May and closes next June. Here are Women get the last laugh In 2018, the SFA explores literature and highlights: Printed in block letters across one wall is a bold declaration: outdoor cooking is food, twinned cultural expressions. The material culture game man’s work. The curators —Jonathan is strong Scott, Jim Auchmutey, and Craig Pascoe— Ogle a chopping block, worn concave have subversively positioned that quote, from cleaver work, loaned from Skylight from a 1941 James Beard book, above a Inn of Ayden, North Carolina; a burn majestic image of a woman pitmaster, her EOME A barrel, rusted to a beautiful auburn, arms raised high at a 1970s Harlem signed by Rodney Scott of Charleston, community barbecue. MEMER A South Carolina; and a fleet of portable patio smokers, including an aluminum As a bonus, the Atlanta History Center SOERNOODAS OR Char-Broil model from 1948 that has tapped a variety of SFA work for the resembles a wheeled trash can and exhibit, including a documentary film on SFA members receive a features a chopping block rear spoiler. Helen’s Bar-B-Que in Brownsville, TN. To watch Helen Turner work, step to one subscription to Gravy Honest barbecue has long of the woodsmoke-perfumed viewing and other benefi ts. been imperiled theaters, set in a makeshift pit bank (or

The wrapper on a bottle of Wright’s visit southernfoodways.org). —JTE HistoryJason Hales/Atlanta Center

6 | southernfoodways.org S 2018 | 7 Future South

Blood on the Leaves, a Mai Tai twist, the restaurant opened, after he’d honed featured St. Croix rum and pecan orgeat. skills at the high-volume Proud Larry’s Bullock & Dabney was a mash-up of the (and geeked out on liqueurs and infusions Corpse Reviver and Mint Julep, flushed at home). with bourbon, Bénédictine, rhubarb, and His bar program is one of many bright citrus. The Clyde began with blanco spots at Saint Leo, named a 2017 Best tequila, mellowed by pinot noir, and floral New Restaurant semifinalist by the James rooibos tea. (I’m Not Your) Negroni riffed Beard Foundation. They grew popular on the classic, boasting gin infused with serving wood-fired pizzas—the burrata West African grains of paradise. Black and soppressata with chili flakes is my Wall Street blended the Black Manhattan standing order when I’m in town. and Whiskey Sour with bourbon, amaro, Early on, I fell for Stinchcomb’s Golden lemon, and a wine float. Rule, made with blanco tequila, yellow Eleven days later, after Saint Leo re- Chartreuse and dry Curaçao. The Grown ceived multiple calls threatening protest, Simba, an early drink, referenced a song owner Emily Blount and Stinchcomb, the by rapper J. Cole. If you were in on the restaurant’s beverage director, pulled the head nod, snaps to you. If you liked the special cocktail menu. A bar guest had flip-style drink—gin, sweet and dry ver- posted an image of the menu on Snapchat; mouths, orange juice, egg yolk, and others posted to Facebook. People were grated nutmeg—great. If you inquired offended. Observers wondered who wrote about the name so Stinchcomb could the menu and what was meant by it. The nerdily quote lyrics as he’s apt to do, all comments were swift. How could they? the better. Whose idea was this? Boycott! Blount and He’s dropped a hip-hop or pop-culture Stinchcomb surveyed the sudden change drink reference on every seasonal menu of events. How did this happen? The Black since the first day of service. Almost two History Month menu had seemed like a years into his tenure, he took the next The Clyde at Saint Leo good idea. step. Joe Stinchcomb presented a portrait of America as seen through the eyes of stinchcomb, twenty-eight years a black man. old, is a passionate man. His words tumble into each other; his bespectacled stinchcomb had studied Louis- MIXED HISTORY eyes brighten when he talks. He grew up ville-native Tom Bullock’s The Ideal an Air Force brat, and spent time in Bartender, the first cocktail recipe book Can cocktails serve up more than booze? Germany, Croatia, Colorado Springs. For published by an African American. He’d a time, he lived in Fayetteville, Georgia, read W.E.B. Du Bois’ 1903 classic tome BY OSAYI ENDOLYN where his father had been born. His The Souls of Black Folk, an underread grandfather, for whom he is named, was masterpiece. Stinchcomb was especially n february 1 of this year, saint leo, an italian-inspired a Montford Point Marine, one of the all- taken with Du Bois’ term “double con- restaurant in Oxford, Mississippi, introduced five drinks to its seasonal black recruitment group that integrated sciousness.” He understood the idea of O menu. The heading read black history month cocktails february the Corps in the early 1940s. dividing his identity on the basis of race, 2018 by joe stinchcomb. Informed enthusiasts might have read what followed After Stinchcomb graduated from the as a black man in a service role in a pre- as a curious and challenging lineup. But then, generally speaking, most diners University of Mississippi in 2013, he took dominantly white Mississippi restaurant.

aren’t informed enthusiasts. Endolyn Osayi up bartending. Blount hired him when He’d been inspired to think of his role as

8 | southernfoodways.org Summer 2018 | 9 Future South an African American bartender in the Blood on the Leaves. It references Billie was saying, ‘I’m free! I’m my own person!’ South as more than a job. He saw his Holiday’s 1939 haunting classic, Strange The focus was not ‘Negro.’” work as a continuation of a rich cultural “I wanted people Fruit, which confronts the legacy of Negro can be fraught, despite its legacy. He’d recently attended BevCon to feel how I feel,” lynching in America. With the new Na- ongoing use in black vernacular among in Charleston, where he heard historian tional Memorial for Peace and Justice in select company. Some of this is cultural, David Wondrich and bartender Duane Stinchcomb said. Montgomery, we have just begun to do and some is generational. New Orleans Sylvestre present on underreported “I didn’t get a the necessary societal work to heal from chef Leah Chase recently told me, unre- drinks history. Stinchcomb aimed to use this terrorism. lated to this incident, that she preferred his station at Saint Leo, which borders blueprint on this.” the term. In her day, she said, they were the Courthouse Square in Oxford, to Southern trees bear strange fruit just colored. “But anyone could be acknowledge and celebrate African Blood on the leaves and blood at the root ‘colored,’” she told me. “At least with American heritage in all its complexities. received more eyes on it than Stinchcomb Black bodies swinging in the southern Negro, it felt like something.” He developed this menu, which he taught had anticipated. Some of the most vocal breeze For others, the most objectionable to a receptive and curious staff, to high- critics were liberal arts faculty at the Strange fruit hanging from the poplar drink was Black Wall Street, which ref- light the achievement, struggle, and University of Mississippi. The cocktail trees erences the early-twentieth-century sacrifice of black people in the United menu had no glossary, summary, or ad- black community in the Greenwood States. He hoped it would encourage all ditional context, leaving intention open Stinchcomb used rum to evoke the district of Tulsa, Oklahoma. (It was once people to sit up, sip slowly, and reflect. to interpretation. Online, people couldn’t enslavement of Africans in the Caribbe- called Negro Wall Street.) Black Wall discern that the menu author was a black an. Blood orange symbolized the exoti- Street was one of the most notable and through snapshots of the menu man—and when they found out, it just cism of blackness. It is constantly desired, successful examples of African Ameri- and paraphrased status updates on Face- complicated the narrative. Stinchcomb for example, in sports—but also forbid- can–led business districts in the country, book, Instagram, and Snapchat, Saint admits a written statement might have den. He chose pecans to make orgeat in replete with physicians, realtors, lawyers, Leo’s Black History Month cocktail menu been useful, but he had his reasons for place of almonds because pecans are and other fixtures of a vibrant, up- leaving one out. native to the South. Stinchcomb told me ward-bound economy. But, as the elders Joe Stinchcomb “I wanted people to feel how I feel as that a university instructor said the drink say, we can’t have nothin’. Between May a black person in America,” Stinchcomb commodified black pain and suffering. 31 and June 1, 1921, police and Tulsa na- said. “I didn’t get a blueprint on this. I (I’m Not Your) Negroni rankled, too. tional guardsmen, with help from neigh- wasn’t told how to navigate these waters.” Stiff and complex, the drink relies on a boring white residents, razed the neigh- Those waters run deep: White patrons cherry-infused Campari that rounds out borhood. Black businesses and homes sometimes call him “boy” to get his at- the peppery cardamom of the grains of were looted and burned. Hundreds of tention. He is a rare black bartender on paradise. Thematically, Stinchcomb was people were killed. Thousands were the Square in a town where many black referencing the Raoul Peck filmI Am Not rendered homeless. It’s still sometimes laborers work in food service. There’s Your Negro, a 2016 documentary based called a “race riot,” but it was an envy-fu- the psychic stress of seeing people who on James Baldwin’s unfinished manu- eled massacre. Colson Whitehead’s most look like you constantly hauled off and script. Some black people were disturbed recent novel, The Underground Railroad, communally policed for golfing slowly, by the play on “Negro”—some later ad- features a scene that mimics this devas- for behaving age appropriately in grade mitted they didn’t realize Negroni was tating event. school, for waiting on friends at Star- also the name of an Italian cocktail, A common complaint about the menu bucks, or for pushing one’s infant in a which, given the context of the beverage and its uncomfortable references was stroller in a public park—in daylight. “I menu, might seem obvious. But it under- that people don’t go to bars to learn about wanted people to think, ‘why do I have scores how quickly emotions around race mass murder. No one wants racial ani- this awkward feeling, this discomfort?’” can blind us to closer reads. Stinchcomb mosity with their $10 cocktail, some For some black people, their shock was says they missed the point. “I was hoping argued. But Stinchcomb hoped the drink

formed by the first drink on the menu, Ivy Timothy people would focus on ‘your.’ Baldwin would spark awareness in the pride and

Summer 2018 | 11 Future South

Blood on the Leaves ingenuity that preceded the bitter end friend in the whole world. history of genocide and enslavement. to Black Wall Street. Why does black Damn, I love Clyde! So does The piece earned him a Pulitzer Prize. achievement vex so many white people? everybody else, coloreds and In 2014, contemporary artist Kara Walker Stinchcomb leaned back in his chair, whites. What would this town was praised for her large-scale installa- reflecting on the drink and why it con- be without him? If we didn’t like tion at the site of Brooklyn’s old Domino jured so much anger. “It’s big, it’s black, the ol’ mayor so much, we’d run Sugar factory, A Subtlety, or The Marvel- and it’s rich.” Clyde. Hell, still may.” ous Sugar Baby. In The New Yorker, Walk- By way of the Bullock & Dabney drink, er’s seventy-five-foot-wide, nude, sug- Stinchcomb aimed to introduce guests we’re primed to note matters of race ar-coated sphinx was “triumphant.” to Tom Bullock and John Dabney. A and privilege like these. And we should. Stinchcomb was scolded for using the veteran of the St. Louis Country Club in In 2015 at a Berkeley, California café, bar as a tableau to discuss difficult sub- Missouri, Bullock published his drinks wait staff “shooed” comedian W. Kamau jects in black history. But the works by manual in 1917. Dabney, born enslaved Bell from talking to a white woman Marsalis and Walker, and countless in Richmond, Virginia, was a celebrated holding a baby, and her friends. He wrote others, also interpret historical pain. caterer and social figure. A master bar- about it, the post went viral, and the That pain, while not wholly defining, is tender known for his Mint Juleps, he business was soundly critcized. Bell is a integral to the multigenerational black used his bartending tips, which his owner black man who had just dined at the experience in America. We grapple with allowed him to keep, to secure his wife’s restaurant; the white woman was his it because it’s alive, right now. freedom, his mother’s, and finally his wife, the baby their child. Citing a failure own. That’s a hell of a lot of drinks. And to rebound from the bad press, the café weeks after the buzz quieted, it’s a nod to the double-edged role that closed this past April. Bell had initially Stinchcomb was in the alley behind Saint tipped wages played during slavery—and received widespread support, but he says Leo when a thirtysomething black man still play now. some of those supporters, many of them rolled up on his bicycle. He wanted to The Clyde is named for Clyde Goolsby, white, now blame him for the closure. bum a cigarette; Stinchcomb found him who owned the Prince Albert Lounge at From my computer screen, Saint Leo’s one. The man asked if he was that bar- the Oxford Holiday Inn. In the 1980s, harshest critics seemed to be people who knowing of the limits between black and tender. He’d never been to the restaurant, Goolsby was famous for his Singapore had never been to the restaurant; a white people. Blackness in America has but had heard of the ordeal. He asked Slings and margaritas. “I had to pay number of them appeared never to have always been judged by degrees, but I’ve Stinchcomb why he’d write a “fucked-up- homage to the trendsetter in this town visited Oxford. Stinchcomb said black never considered regionalism as a mitigat- ass menu” and said that he was boycotting for me,” Stinchcomb says. The pinot noir people told him that his menu couldn’t ing factor of black identity. A few days after the restaurant because of their insensi- in the Bullock & Dabney pairs beautiful- have any positive impact in a town like pulling the menu, Stinchcomb reinstated tivity. Stinchcomb retrieved the old cock- ly with the rooibos, lime, and bitters. this . “Maybe Memphis or Jackson. Maybe Bullock & Dabney and The Clyde. The tail menu and walked the man through it. Stinchcomb identifies with Goolsby and Brooklyn. Not in Oxford,” he recounted. drinks were celebratory and broadly per- The man was attentive. “Is this a fucked- what he must have overcome to own a bar People said he should have hosted a ceived as noncontroversial. And, he felt, up-ass menu?” Stinchcomb asked. in town. In Willie Morris’ essay collection dinner, a pop-up, maybe off-site and away they were damn good recipes. “I don’t know. It’s still kind of fucked Shifting Interludes, an unnamed custom- from Saint Leo and the Square, where he up though,” the man replied. er describes his relationship to Goolsby could present his themed menu. if food and beverage is the cul- “Our history always has been,” Stinch- in a piece called “Coming on Back.” Others questioned his background. In the tural laboratory we’re saying it can be, comb said. hubbub, a black writer friend from this then why do we struggle with the idea Stinchcomb invited the bicyclist to “I don’t quite know how to say region argued that Stinchcomb’s menu and that drinks can serve as a text for complex come see him sometime—at the bar. He this,” a white merchant tells me, my openness to it were a result of our not ideas? We give music, art, and television said to him, “You can’t boycott a place “because I’m an old country boy being born and raised in the South (I’m from plenty of leeway. Trumpeter and com- you’ve never been.” and I grew up the way it was California). She felt that being black and poser Wynton Marsalis’ 1997 epic, Blood

down here, but Clyde’s my best from the South afforded her an inherent Ivy Timothy on the Fields, dealt with America's Osayi Endolyn is deputy editor for Gravy.

12 | southernfoodways.org Summer 2018 | 13 T the colorofclovers. pepper bell of Slivers missing? What’s taste. stir, cayenne, of dash A down. rain flakes The pot. the over percorns pep black grind I paprika? of lots use through my fingers. Paprika. Didn’t Oma sifts salt Sea pot. the scrapeinto I them es and seeds leak over the cutting board. matoes follow, red, ripe, firm. Their juic to Five dice. skins, their off peel I sun. stones heated by a late afternoon like hands, my in warm feel he potatoes for goulash - - -

O 14 build American diningempires. residents Paz la de José San fields, or stereotypical immigrant jobs in factories empty.working nearly of Insteadit left UnitedStates,the nativeshavein tunes for their Jalisco.makeTo of state the Paz, a town of just over one thousand in saga ofthetwo menwhostarted it. restaurant industry in the South, and the Mexican the of history the reveals it this art is a hieroglyph; to the trained eye, Customers may not think much of it. But church. Catholic looming a and plaza of states, sombreros, neonbeersigns. “Mexican”—maps similarly is decor the lights hang across the ceiling. The rest of Christmas matches. soccer broadcast margaritas into giant glasses. Televisions town America. among Mexicans but still popular in small- ters swimming in cheese sauce, is déclassé with its menu bingo-card of combo plat and fajitas to mostly non-Latino diners. steaming platters of enchiladas, burritos, on a Saturday evening as waiters deliver brisk is Business Restaurant.Mexican BY GUSTAVO ARELLANO How onetown’s restauranteros builtanempire Chico Good Ol' SOUTH THE RISE AND FALL OF THE The painting depicts San José de la de José San depicts painting The A framed painting depicts a tree-filled spot, Mexican sit-down of type This

| southernfoodways.org ville, Georgia, stands Monterrey Dora in exit Highway Buford interstate the ff A bartender pours frozen ’ S ACP KINGS 285 - - -

model slowly fades. Forty-five years ago, across the South, the San José de la Paz cuisines their spread arrivals newer people became Jalisco that the demonym for its towns- new arrivals. Repeat. gaveand class to middle jobs American often led to more. The owner joined the family to come and help. One restaurant his called and rare, were restaurants rant in a Southern town where Mexican He opened a Monterrey Mexican Restau money.savedhis and safe, to sink from for a couple of years, learned the business owned by a fellow townsman. He worked Norte for a guaranteed job at a restaurant emerged: pattern a dish rarely foundoutsidetheregion. pudding.) The latter is a uniquely Sur-Mex and paste between somewhere sauce cheese a in drowned rice, and chicken grilled with made pollo, con (arroz ACP an enchilada, and either beans or rice) and taco,(a Gonzales entréeslikeSpeedy the with same, the nearly remain menus chains change across the country, but the the of names The beyond. and South the across restaurants Mexican of dreds women from the San José became so well known in known well so became José San Back in San José, as the exodus began, and men years, forty past the Over restauranteros. Today, as pueblo have opened hun A man moved to moved man A el el - -

Illustrations by Ran Zheng Good Ol' Chico two former friends went to war to rule brawny; the photo that accompanies workers to open restaurants in partner- Atlanta’s Mexican food industry. Their Macias’ naturalization petition shows ship with him. In the deals, Raúl retained tortillas-and-tacos race would transform him in a sporty V-neck T-shirt, a slight the rights to the name “Monterrey,” sold their hometown—and el Sur. smile hinting at his confidence. them ingredients from his wholesale food According to family members, Macias company, made all the collective business san josé de la paz is in Los Altos, and a friend drove down to Atlanta to decisions, and reaped much of the profits. the highlands of Jalisco. The state is the accompany a coworker who transferred with his first Monterrey Mexican restau- He soon claimed interest in at least six- birthplace of tequila and mariachi. Los within the company. Macias, who loved rant. It opened just off Buford Highway in ty-five Monterrey companies in North Altos occupies the same space in the to cook, asked for a transfer as well. He the city of Chamblee. He followed two Carolina and Tennessee. Mexican imagination that Appalachia does saw an opportunity. Mexican food options years later with a Monterrey in Doraville, “He didn’t care much about the quality in the American mind. In Los Altos, the in the city were nearly nonexistent then. a two-minute drive from El Toro #2. By of the food,” says Martin. “He opened people connect their identity to the region’s José Macias opened Acapulco in 1973 then, Macias had three. Atlanta’s Mexican and opened places. He was like, ‘Give me mountains and agave fields. Native hooch near downtown Atlanta with Raúl León. restaurant war was on. my profit.’ But a lot of people made it flows freely, and soaring music tells tales The two knew each other from San José. The El Toro and Monterrey chains big,” Martin adds. “They did it with ease.” of love, adventure, and pride. Back home, León had become a delegado competed for workers, suppliers, loca- municipal—the Mexican equivalent of a tions, and especially for customers. They by the late 1980s, Atlanta journalists mayoral appointee—in charge of infra- poached family members from each began to note the transnational entre- structure projects. He knew how to build other. Martin Macias, José’s youngest preneurial spirit of San José de la Paz things. Macias invited León to go into brother, first worked for León because natives. Mexican restaurant listings in business with him. The cantina tried to he paid more. “I stayed until José com- the Atlanta Yellow Pages, once sparse, cater to the few Mexicans who lived in plained to our mom, ‘Make him work for numbered over a hundred, many founded Atlanta at the time, but it closed within us!’” says Martin, now owner of El Rey by El Toro or Monterrey alumni. a year. Not too long after, José Macias del Taco in Doraville. “But Raúl gave us The Atlanta market became so satu- and Raúl Leon, business partners and a lot of opportunities.” rated that restauranteros staked out their “I’m alteño, of the good guys/by birth- friends, split. No one knows why. In the late 1970s, most Mexicans in own fiefdoms. In 1986, Jesus Arellano right,” sang Mexican music legend Jorge In 1974, Macias opened the first El Toro Atlanta lived in one of a dozen or so opened El Rodeo in Roanoke, Virginia, Negrete in his 1940s hit “Esos Altos de in a former motel diner off Buford apartment complexes in Grant Park, one after a San José de la Paz friend in Atlanta Jalisco” (“Those Jalisco Highlands”). Highway. He picked the name because of the city’s oldest neighborhoods. Every urged him to find an area where there “And when I talk about my homeland/ it was easy for Americans to pronounce. Sunday, San José de la Paz natives would was no competition. Arellano went on My heart enlarges.” Despite its beauty, There were several manufacturing plants relax in a nearby park and grill carne to own thirty restaurants. One of his em- life in San José was tough. Many of its and factories near that stretch of Buford— asada. Mexicans were a rarity. “Back ployees, José Isabel Ayala, broke off to men began to trek to the United States GM and GE and Frito-Lay. It was a then, people would tell us, ‘You don’t start El Dorado in Raleigh, North Caro- in the 1950s as part of the bracero perfect place to lure hungry workers who look Mexican,’” Martin Macias says with lina, in 1988; there are seven today. program, which allowed Mexicans to wanted lunch or an after-shift drink. a laugh. “‘You have no sombrero. You legally work under contract. One of them Macias explicitly changed recipes to have green eyes. You’re Italian!’” was Jesús Macias, the father of José appeal to American palates. His menus More El Toros and Monterreys opened. Macias, a grocer who seasonally picked displayed phonetic pronunciations of José and Raúl brought in more relatives avocados and grapes in California. now-common dishes like chalupas and and friends to work their outposts. The The oldest of ten siblings, José Macias quesadillas. Flour tortillas superseded Macias clan opened restaurants in Sa- joined the wave in 1951 at age fourteen. corn. Tacos came in hard shells. And vannah, Charleston, and Orlando. Former He bounced between the United States cheese smothered everything. employees opened still more with their and Mexico before he found a factory job Macias opened a second El Toro a couple blessings, sticking mostly to the ever-ex- in Chicago in the 1960s, a gig secured by of miles up Buford Highway in Doraville panding Atlanta metro area. a countryman. At 5'6", he was short but two years later. In 1977, León responded Raúl was ambitious. He convinced

16 | southernfoodways.org Summer 2018 | 17 Good Ol' Chico

codified the term los hijos ausentes and believe in hard work.” By then, the featured a list of fifty-fourrestauranteros Morning News reported, San José de la who owned a combined one hundred Paz expats ran at least five hundred forty ninety-seven restaurants in Georgia, restaurants across the South and beyond. North Carolina, and Tennessee. Thir- ty-eight of the migrants had at least two locations; Macias and Leon had twelve “You forget that legacy and thirty-three, respectively. “People from San José de la Paz aren’t until people remind you. going to beg for a job [in the United You stay in awe that people States],” the Mi Pueblo authors bragged, because “they come with their country- know about your family.” men…And if they give a helping hand to any Mexicans, they definitely give it to those from the pueblo.” today, business is brisk at El Rey retired to their homes north of the city After building his empire, Leon re- del Taco on Buford Highway in Doraville. in Gwinnett County, which they bought turned to San José in 1986 to serve, again, On a Sunday afternoon, waiters deliver at the height of El Toro’s success in the José Ibarra, another El Rodeo alum, as a delegado. Macias, meanwhile, earned steaming platters of alambres, a hot 1980s. The last El Toro closed a couple born about forty-five minutes to the acclaim in the United States. “José is like skillet of beef, chicken, or chorizo (or all of years ago. south of San José, opened his own El a donkey that learned to play the flute,” three) with a choice of house-made corn José died in 2006 of diabetes. The Rodeos in Raleigh, North Carolina, as a cousin joked to Nation’s Restaurant or flour tortillas. The crowd is almost Atlanta Journal-Constitution did not mark well as a more upscale restaurant, La News in a 1990 article. By 1992, his Chara exclusively Latino. his passing with an obituary. Back in 1992, Rancherita. “A lot of people saw that a Enterprises (a reference to his nickname, El Rey del Taco occupies the building he had asked the family to split up their lot of people did good,” says Jesús León. “Charabasco,” a pun on the small fishes where José Macias opened the second twenty-one restaurants among themselves A second cousin of Raúl’s, he founded he caught as a kid) cracked Hispanic Busi- El Toro. The owner is Martin Macias, and give them new names (Martin the El Caporal chain in the early 1990s ness Magazine’s Top 500 Latino-owned José’s brother, who helped create a renamed his Los Loros—“Parrots”—so he in Louisville, Kentucky. His sister’s companies in the United States. Annual soccer culture in the region when he didn’t have to pay too much to change his husband founded the El Nopal chain, sales hit $5.7 million. He split his time began sponsoring Latino youth and adult marquees). His restaurant in San José de which now has nearly thirty locations between Mexico and Atlanta, and opened soccer leagues in the early 1990s. He was la Paz closed. “He made bad business across Kentucky and Indiana. “And it a restaurant in Guadalajara called El Toro one of Atlanta’s first restaurateurs to decisions,” Martin stated plainly. extended and it extended, and slowly de Don José, with a large outdoor patio, open a true taquería when he debuted El Toro’s legacy lives on. When Martin almost everyone got into the restaurant traditional Jaliscan food like birria and Los Rayos in 1995. “My brother was the moved two years ago to a new house, “All industry,” says Jesús. tacos, and an evening mariachi extrava- pioneer of Tex-Mex in Atlanta,” Martin my neighbors were El Toro customers,” he ganza. When the Georgia Dome stadium says, “and I was a pioneer of taquerías.” says in amazement. “When they found out san josé transformed. Los hijos debuted in 1992, El Toro opened a stall, He’s one of the last Macias siblings to who I was, they said, ‘Oh, we used to go to ausentes—“the absent sons”—remitted although the AJC dismissed the skimpy own a restaurant; nearly everyone else El Toro #1.’ You forget that legacy until money to Mexico to improve infrastruc- chicken fajitas as a “rip-off.” people remind you,” Martin says. “You stay ture and renovate ancestral homes. When The San José de la Paz dynasty became in awe that people know about your family.” los Macias returned in the mid-1980s, a so famous that the Dallas Morning News Raúl León spent the last years of his brass band greeted them at the Guadala- cited the restauranteros as a success story life appealing a $208,324 civil judgment jara Airport. In San José, extended family in a 1999 multipart series on how against him for breach of fiduciary duty threw a massive party at the Macias ranch. Mexican migration had changed the and fraud, filed by a distant relative who In 1994, the town published a book, United States. “Deep down,” Macias told opened a restaurant for him in Wise, San José de la Paz, Mi Pueblo, which them, “we’re still humble people who Virginia. A 2006 court decision upheld

18 | southernfoodways.org Summer 2018 | 19 Good Ol' Chico the initial ruling, and critiqued Leon’s continued opening restaurants creating business philosophy. The plaintiffs “both what started as a family business into a regarded Raúl as their ‘patrone,’ or chain. All restaurants are owned and op- patron, a person who gives instructions erated mostly by family.” None returned and tells people what to do, a boss to be my requests for comment. followed without question.” The judge The original Monterrey is now an          . included a disturbing footnote: León died abandoned building. A new shopping We lead dialogue about American food culture. Membership of a methamphetamine overdose in 2001. plaza dominated by Asian businesses dollars account for only 5% of SFA’s annual operating budget. displaced the first El Toro. The parking Philanthropic gifts fund SFA’s work, including oral history, many in the second generation of the lot was pink with the labels of burnt fire- fi lm, and publishing. San José de la Paz diaspora continue in crackers the last time I visited, a day after their parents’ footsteps. In Louisville, the Chinese New Year. I try to imagine Please make a gift to SFA. Fabián León, the son of Jesús, runs The the area as it was forty years ago, when Of any amount. It all counts. Ville Taqueria, where he braises carnitas José Macias and Raúl León were young      
  in bourbon and mixes margaritas with the and ambitious yet didn’t know that they’d southernfoodways.org to help us same. He reaps the transformation that change the South’s palate and its restau- tell more true and complicated his ancestral village wrought in the South. rant landscape forever. stories about the American South. “Back in the 1990s, my dad told me that Then I recall a stanza to a corrido in- Preston Highway, where he first opened cluded in San José de la Paz, Mi Pueblo. [his] restaurant, was gonna be another “To my absent brothers/I recommend little Mexican village, like in Chicago,” this,” the song goes. “That, although you Fabián said in a 2015 SFA oral history. “He may be far away/Don’t forget your said that we’re gonna bring a lot of people pueblo.” At this point in the town’s here. And I didn’t understand it [then], history, the foods that originated with but I see [now] what he was talking about.” the men and women of San José de la Monterrey restaurants and their spinoffs Paz are as signal in the modern-day South still do business across the country. Each as Nashville hot chicken. Somewhere, I sports the same simple logo of a sombre- think, as I drive to El Rey del Taco for ro on top of a serape, with “Monterrey” one more meal before flying home to above it in red, cursive font. Dozens of California, José and Raúl must be smiling, websites for different branches describe plotting to open more restaurants. their history this way: “Monterrey Mexican It’s easy to dismiss San José's restau- Restaurant was first opened in Doraville ranteros as men and women who in the 1970s. From there, Mr. Raúl Leon watered down their culture for gringos. Indeed, Mexicans within and outside the South dismiss ACP as inauthentic when I describe the dish. But restau- ranteros proved a valuable lesson: If Mexicans could become successful and integrate themselves into the American South, then there’s cheese-covered hope Stories about the changing American South through the foods we eat. for the rest of us. Available on iTunes or at southernfoodways.org.

Gustavo Arellano is Gravy’s columnist.

20 | southernfoodways.org S 2018 | 21 Documentary DARE TO LOOK Al Clayton and the photography of hunger BY W. RALPH EUBANKS

hotographs affect the body as much as they do the mind. First an image falls within your direct field of vision, providing all the raw P details the brain in turn processes. Then the visual impact of what you see affects the body on an emotional level, sometimes leading to a descent into per- sonal experience or memory, making the image either compelling or repellant. In turn, a wounding or personally touching detail in an image might establish a strong emotional connection with a photograph. Finally there come the more cerebral questions of historical context and provenance—when the photograph was taken, who took the image, how did they know the subject or place. They allow the viewer to reckon with the image in a more analytical way, thus separat- ing the visual and aesthetic cues from the emotional ones.

This is a long way of saying that per- The men, women, and children in Clay- ception is not a passive act. What we see ton’s photographs gaze directly at the is equally as important as the way we see camera. “It was rare for me to not want it and the way we feel after seeing it. That to have eye contact with my subject,” the is why it is difficult to look at Al Clayton’s photographer told NPR’s Michele Norris images from Still Hungry in America and in 2006. As he took his photographs, not react emotionally to them. These Clayton asked his subjects what their images don’t tug at your heartstrings— lives were like, who they were, and who they hit squarely in the gut. And they elicit they wanted to be. Clayton’s engagement

Photos © Al Clayton, used with permission of Al Clayton Photography, LLC Photography, of Al Clayton used with permission Photos © Al Clayton, thought and dialogue about their topic. with those he portrayed gives these

22 | southernfoodways.org Summer 2018 | 23 Documentary images their profound intimacy. slowly and cumulatively, to guide the Robert Coles’ text, but also for Clayton’s Clayton’s photographs deal with a topic viewer through the range of emotional photographs. Yes, the shacks he photo- that was difficult for viewers to confront and cerebral reactions to the images. The graphs do signal to readers that the topic in 1968 and is still difficult fifty years later: reason these images remain relevant today of this book is poverty. But it’s not until the existence of hungry Americans who has everything to do with the intimacy of more than twenty pages into the book live in poverty and see no way to escape their composition and with his desire to that an image reveals how hunger is en- from it. Both yesterday and today, the capture visual truth rather than pure, raw tangled with poverty. Clayton captured hungry seem to live on a hidden plane, emotion or cloying sentimentality. The an open refrigerator perched on a whether it’s the homeless person we ca- power of Clayton’s photographs derives wooden floor, and its contents include sually stroll past on a city street or the from his daring. He commands us to look little that looks edible, with the exception rusting house trailers we ignore that and captures images inside the frame that of a jar of baby food and pieces of what punctuate the Southern landscape. appeal to both the head and the heart. looks like crookneck squash. A young Poverty is still invisible, and Clayton Clayton begins Still Hungry in America child stands in front of the door, a spoon sought to make it visible. with a wide-angle examination of the lying near his bare feet. He looks direct- Clayton understood this hidden nature landscape. The opening lines make this ly at the camera. The photograph feels of hunger and poverty. He knew that he clear: organic in its composition rather than could not convey this world purely by intentional. evoking an emotional reaction with his The following photographs move from Clayton often photographed what images, which would be easy to do by neighborhoods to people, from chil- caught his eye when he walked into a Clayton commands filling them with the standard tropes of dren to parents to grandparents, from room and then what hit his eye next, and poverty: tattered clothes, dirty faces, dis- rural areas to cities, from the past—and kept going in the same manner. On the us to look and tended bellies. Yes, you will find those still present—realities of farm life to opposite page he captures a few govern- captures images that well-known signs and symbols of poverty the new realities that factories and ment-issued commodity items in a still in the pages of Still Hungry in America, urban ghettos present. life: flour, perhaps some cornmeal, and appeal to both the but Clayton does not lead off with them. a few canned items. That follows with head and the heart. Instead, he builds his visual narrative That statement sets the tone not only for an image of a man standing over a wood-burning stove, wood stacked pre- cariously nearby. In just three images, of three friends with third-degree burns Clayton communicates the daily peril similar to those Clayton documented these families confront of having enough with his camera. to eat, the substandard conditions in Photographs provide evidence. Clayton which they live, and that what little they sought to provide evidence of hunger own could go up in smoke at any moment. and poverty—as well as the precarious- For anyone who remembers wood- ness of the circumstances of poverty. stoves, you probably know they were the These images urge the viewer to ask two culprit in many a house fire. I know this questions: First, what are the economic because several classmates in my small mechanisms that led to the circumstanc- Mississippi town in the 1960s were es depicted here? And second, what are burned out of their homes by the chance the structures that keep this hunger and combination of a stray spark from a wood poverty in place? stove and a highly flammable item Robert Coles’ text provides informa- nearby. Sometimes it was an item of tion for readers about the cycle of poverty clothing that went up in flames, which as well as the nutritional and medical is why my memory surfaces the names issues that afflict the men, women, and

24 | southernfoodways.org Summer 2018 | 25 Documentary

Contemporary photographs of hunger would look different: We would see how the obesity epidemic threatens the lives of our poorest citizens. children Clayton photographs. He 1930s, documentary photography has focuses on the voices of the people on played a role in examining cultural and the page, which help to shape the way political issues, whether it was Richard we see and interpret the photographs. Wright’s 12 Million Black Voices (1941) Coles also realizes the limitations of what on how Jim Crow traveled north with the written word can do. He writes, “A the Great Migration, Zora Neale Hur- published photograph, in contrast to a ston’s stories of voodoo in Tell My Horse documentary—whether written or (1937), or Erskine Caldwell and Margaret filmed—makes a condition available for Bourke-White’s Depression-era images permanent inspection. A doctor’s report, in You Have Seen Their Faces (1937). Of no matter how well written and clinical- course, the most famous of these projects ly rich, still needs the reader’s imagina- from the 1930s is James Agee and Walker tion.” In other words, Clayton’s photo- Evans’ Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. graphs serve as a means of getting us to This work significantly influenced social wrote about one of the final photo shoots NPR in 2006. His use of intimacy rather inhabit the world of poverty that we documentation and photography. As with the Hale County tenant farmers: than detachment gives his photographs might otherwise overlook. A photograph James Agee states flatly in the preface, “Walker setting up the terrible structure their power. is the ultimate way of showing, not telling “the camera seems to me…the central of the tripod crested by the black square Contemporary photographs of hunger us, the narrative of poverty in America. instrument of our time.” heavy head, dangerous as that of a and poverty would look different. We Since it came to prominence in the Al Clayton’s photography relates to hunchback, of the camera; stooping would see how the obesity epidemic— the work of Walker Evans. Both seek to beneath cloak and cloud of wicked cloth, which is a result of providing inexpensive create a dialectic of the visual and the and twisting buttons; a witchcraft pre- and marginally nutritious food to the same verbal to confront a larger social issue. paring, closer than keenest ice, and population that once had a scarcity of But that is where the similarities end. incalculably cruel.” food—threatens the lives of our poorest Clayton takes an object lesson from Agee’s observation of Evans stands citizens. But Clayton’s images still connect Evans’ work: Whereas Evans chose to in contrast to the way Clayton thought with the present. They provide evidence make detachment part of the composi- of his work. “The face of a hungry child of how we got to where we are today. And tion of his images—Evans was famous- or their demeanor just really prints on they tell us the dangers of looking away ly realistic, reserved, and reticent in his me. It’s unforgettable,” Clayton said to rather than daring to look. approach to photography—Clayton made a conscious choice to engage with W. Ralph Eubanks is a visiting professor of Southern Studies at the University of his subjects. Over the course of their Mississippi and author of the memoirs Ever Is a Long Time and The House at the work together in the Alabama Black End of the Road. Belt, Walker Evans withdrew as James Agee engaged. Evans’s stark images were The University of Georgia Press published a new edition of Still Hungry in America sometimes at odds with Agee’s floral in March 2018, as part of the Southern Foodways Alliance Studies in Culture, and engaged text. Here is what Agee People, and Place.

26 | southernfoodways.org Summer 2018 | 27 ITALIAN

Unloading bananas HEAVEN in New Orleans,   c. 1903.     

by Justin Nystrom

Summer 2018 | 29 belief in the need to construct a modern lived experience of those New Orleanians narrative that reflects all of New Orleans’ who came of age in the city in the late SECOND ONLY TO CREOLE EXCEPTIONALISM people. A greater openness to the plural- 1970s and early 1980s. Their youth may in its purposeful shaping of historical memory in the city has ity of our shared historical narrative may have borne witness to a long-deferred been the decades-long conscious construction of the antebel- finally be upon us, however. In 2015, the black political empowerment, but there lum period as the city’s golden age, an implicit if unwitting Historic New Orleans Collection’s Pur- is no denying that oil-bust New Orleans, celebration of the slaveholder’s perspective so pervasive that chased Lives exhibit attracted record punctuated by the financial disaster of numbers of visitors, challenging them to the 1984 World’s Fair, entered a period even those who might otherwise reject such assumptions fall ponder the endemic nature of the internal of long economic stagnation attended by victim to its illusive power. I was invited to sit on a panel, “Be- slave trade’s presence in the city’s urban a steady outmigration of jobs and resi- fore Katrina: The Decline of New Orleans from the Civil War landscape despite the effects of a sus- dents. Members of this generation, now to the Twenty-First Century,” at the 2013 annual meeting of the tained program of civic erasure. Another entering their sixties and seventies, indicator of a spreading reappraisal came reflect fondly on the cheap rents and American Historical Association. The panel was predicated on with the 2014 opening of a slavery museum vibrant anachronism-loving local culture the fallacious notion of New Orleans’ steady decline since the at Whitney Plantation. The contentious that thrived here, skyrocketing crime Civil War, an intellectual assumption bound by threads of cul- ongoing debate over the place of Confed- rates of that era notwithstanding. The ture and memory to the subtly powerful ideology of the Lost erate monuments in New Orleans and 1990s amplified notions of New Orleans elsewhere has revealed the brittle edges exceptionalism and unwittingly rein- Cause. This was the first time that I consciously and publicly of change, but it is clear that hoopskirt forced Lost Cause narratives by doubling called this assumption into question, articulating a growing fantasies are no longer paradigmatic. down on its Paradise Lost trope for The same preservationist impulse that reasons that were different yet somehow emerged in the 1920s French Quarter and the same. Living amid such economic birthed the fabrication of an antebellum stagnation, the city’s residents gazed architectural fantasy devoid of its slave warily at the hustling metropolises of underpinnings also steadily obliterated Charlotte, Atlanta, and Houston, jealous traces of the Sicilian immigrants who had of their wealth but inwardly thankful taken root there in the last quarter of the that New Orleanians possessed too great nineteenth century. Devoid of the imper- of a cultural sensibility to so unwisely ative to construct a glorious past and to succumb to such terminal sameness. Yet the dismay of nascent preservationists, as much as the city’s inhabitants like to Sicilian immigrants accelerated the in- tell themselves that their city is not like dustrialization of the French Quarter, every other place, it is fundamentally a while the poorer among them crowded city like any other in that it is governed into the neighborhood’s run-down struc- by thousands of daily human interac- tures. The studied antebellum illusion in tions, with the flow of commerce pulsing place today, codified by the Vieux Carré through its veins. It deserves a systemic Commission, has left little trace of the analysis that holds such romanticism at former “Italian Colony” that thrived arm’s length. before the era of modern tourism. With every passing day, the pre-Ka- A thoughtful investigation of the Sicil- trina epoch recedes into memory. Crime ian migration and its impact on New and studied anachronism may be with Orleans also seems particularly relevant us yet, but many of the political and cul- in today’s postdiluvian era, a time of dra- tural assumptions that governed New matic and fundamental change in the Orleans for a generation or more before city. The pain of this ongoing transfor- the storm have dissolved under the im- mation has been exacerbated by the placable pressure of human agency. Such

PREVIOUS SPREAD: Library of Congress; OPPOSITE PAGE: Library of Congress PREVIOUS SPREAD: Library OPPOSITE PAGE: of Congress; historical disconnect represented by the pressures include escalating real estate

A | southernfoodways.org A corner of the French Market c. 1900–1910 Summer 2018 | 31 1133-1135 Chartres St., c. 1937-1938. OR MOST O ITS LIE NE ORLEANS AS EEN IN ETNIC SOCIAL AND CLTRAL MOTION TE STORY O O SICILIANS AN EARLIER TRIE O NECOMERS CAME TO TE CITY AND LET TEIR IMPRINT OERS A ISTORICAL ANALOY OR TODAY prices driven by the arrival of moneyed St. Ann and fronting all of Decatur Street outsiders and Airbnb, tourists crowding functioned as a landward extension of the sidewalks of Magazine Street, and the busy waterfront, with people hauling, hipsters orbiting Sixth Ward second-line wholesaling, and peddling the commerce parades like a cloud of mosquitoes as of the port. While Italian immigrants well as quieter yet no less profound de- settled in every part of New Orleans, here mographic shifts in ethnicity and class. in the Lower Quarter, an ethnic neigh- While upsetting for some, these trans- borhood that outsiders called the Italian formative events are more in step with Colony emerged by about 1875. the historical processes that have char- Photographers working at the turn of acterized development in the city since the twentieth century have bequeathed Bienville fi rst claimed the river’s muddy to us a wealth of images from this time bank for France. For most of its life, New and place, and these pictures have done Orleans has been in ethnic, social, and much to shape our vision of the French cultural motion. The story of how Sicil- Quarter from a century ago. Dilapidated ians, an earlier tribe of newcomers, came courtyards where careworn immigrant to the city and left their imprint oƒ ers a women wait for laundry to dry in the historical analogy for today. breeze. An army of men unloads stalks of bananas from the hold of a large white steel steamship into a waiting refrigerat- ed rail car, while a man of purpose stands atop the train in a dark suit, supervising „ †‡ˆ‰ˆ „Š ‹ Œ‡ŽŠ† Ž †‡ˆ ‘„†’’Š the action, and stevedores in shirtsleeves Sicilian past, it surely haunts the streets shade their eyes against the afternoon of the Lower French Quarter. Even if the sun and stare at the camera. Five shoeless, dying echoes of spoken Italian fell silent streetwise boys sit in a mule-drawn cart over fi fty years ago, and in spite of the at the front of the French Market, four of Vieux Carré Commission’s obsession them looking boldly into the lens. Two with erasing what does not conform to other boys gaze directly at us from the its antebellum vision, impressions of the margins of a fruit stand, stalks of bananas immigrant century remain visible on the yawning from rafters in every direction. landscape if one knows where to look. Stark and real, a heartbeat scissored out For about a century beginning in the of time, these images tell a story of shab-

1860s, the part of the Quarter lying below biness and poverty—an incomplete story, Library of Congress

32 | southernfoodways.org SummerSummer 2018 2018 | |33 B

Burgundy Street Iberville Street Iberville Dumaine Street Dumaine OR AOT A CENTRY EINNIN IN TE S Dauphine Street ie of TE PART O TE ARTER LYIN ELO ST ANN AND

ren St. Ann Street Ann St. Bienville Street Bienville era ose Bourbon Street RONTIN ALL O DECATR STREET NCTIONED AS A

Conti Street Conti Street Orleans LANDARD EXTENSION O TE SY ATERRONT Royal Street cargoes bought and sold in distant vocabulary embraces but a few dozen

markets. The French Quarter of 1900 gave words, the major part of which are ex- St. Peter Street Peter St. St. Louis Street Louis St. birth to the familial, cultural, and fi nancial pressive, emphatic and terrifi c oaths.” dynasties that shaped much of the coming Photographs from the turn of the twen- Chartres Street century in New Orleans. tieth century show a very similar scene. Jackson At the heart of the Sicilian Quarter Looking down Decatur Street where Toulouse Street Toulouse Square stood the French Market, a place no in- North Peters branches o¥ to form a formed nineteenth-century tourist dared narrow pie wedge of ground at the tip of to miss. For correspondents who arrived the vegetable market, one image shows by ship, as John H. B. Latrobe did in 1834, the early morning sun just over the river, the experience was literally unavoidable boiling from the lumpy, manure-strewn Sicilian Upper French Quarter because the “vegetable market” stood cobbles a warm-weather haze that clings C ira near the bottom of the plank that took indolently to a line of empty produce them from the ship to the wharf. From wagons and crates of the despised cab- Mark Twain in 1857 to Edward King in bages. Surrounded by stalks of bananas : : : 1875, everyone seemed to harbor an and bundles of pineapples hanging from e yser ose oaris roeries Leon rias opinion about the market’s charms and the rafters, an Italian man in the fi rst stall resen rase by ines an Liors Cb failings, and these written impressions arranges oranges into tall pyramids. A groer eie ierra in s contributed, for good or ill, to the city’s few steps away, a young woman surveys exotic reputation. Few opined with as a sad display of spotted bananas selling : : : much derision as Lafcadio Hearn, who for a dime a dozen, while two nearby ei yser ose oe oneeone nony noine aseras described the market’s slovenly appear- men survey her with signifi cantly greater resen ae for resen yser aoon an ance to a Cincinnati audience in late 1877, approval. Just across Decatur, where origina oner ei ano esaran a time when Italians had begun to make Central Grocery is now, white awnings their presence felt: “Piles of cabbages, stretch between the second-story balcony written from the perspective of outsiders. French Quarter and the Sicilians who turnips and strange vegetables adorn and the sidewalk in a valiant e¥ ort to It is no accident that this geography is lived and worked there stood at the cross- each side. Monstrous cheeses smile from repel the heat of the day. Today, all of this the source of the mythologies of the Si- roads of a food-distribution empire. For every corner; the walls are festooned is gone, replaced by the decorative shrub- cilian experience in New Orleans—every- several generations, Decatur Street and with bananas, etc.; while fi sh, bread, bery in front of the Joan of Arc statue. thing from the mu
uletta and Brocato’s the French Market functioned as the drive fl our, and even alligators, have each ap- The French Market has operated in cannoli to the assassination of Chief David wheel for the machinery that fed the city propriate tables.” Hearn heard “every one form or another since 1789, when it Hennessey. Like the photographs, the and region. While some men labored and language—English, French, Italian and became the fi rst in a large number of mythologies both are grounded in realism fought on the docks for workmen’s wages, German, varied by gombic languages of public markets that supplied fresh food

and obscure the greater picture. The others made enormous fortunes brokering aae fro sin ysro as every shade; languages whose whole for New Orleanians. The city had a total

34 | southernfoodways.org S 2018 | 35 Bourbon Street

AS AMERICAN CITIES ARE CONCERNED NE ORLEANS IS OLD

St. Ann Street Ann St. Ursulines Street Ursulines

Barracks Street Barracks

Dumaine Street Dumaine St. Philip Street Philip St. LAND SES ERE AE CANED SINIICANTLY OER TIME Royal Street Street Gov. Nicholls PARTICLARLY IN TE RENC ARTER of thirty-four markets before 1911, the ly over time, sometimes more than once, Chartres Street most of any major American metropol- particularly in the French Quarter. By itan area. Some still stand today: St. Roch, the 1930s, the antebellum structures of for example, was originally built in 1874 the French Market had not only fallen along St. Claude Avenue and was com- into a state of disrepair but proved inad- pletely renovated in 2014 along the rim equate for distributing fresh produce Fruit Jackson Square Jackson of the contemporary city’s bohemia. Most around a modern city. Trucks and auto- Market are gone—the Prytania Market is now a mobiles took the place of mules and Decatur Street Butchers’ Market egetable grassy strip between Lyons and Upper- wagons as the primary means of trans- Baaar N. Peters MarketStreet Market ld line across from the Kingpin Bar—while portation, and the nineteenth-century Old Gallatin Street U.S. Mint others have been converted to other uses. footprint had simply become untenable. They began as places where local health Meanwhile, the amount of land between authorities could inspect and presumably the market and the levee had shrunk guarantee the safety of meats, seafood, because of the river’s encroachment. Sicilian Lower French Quarter poultry, and fresh fruits and vegetables, Even though current memories docu- circa and for much of the nineteenth and early ment the twilight of the French Market’s twentieth centuries, the city forbade commercial relevance, the cultural pro- private markets from operating within cesses that they describe refl ect lifestyle C: C: C: thirty-two hundred feet (roughly nine patterns established over the course of a Taormina pasta factory Progress Grocery, Federico Brothers and wholesale grocery . Macaroni Manufacturing, blocks) of public markets, all but guar- century. Salvadore “Tommy” Tusa, who imports, built in s ss. anteeing them a monopoly on fresh food today operates Central Grocery, remem- and owned by the sales and making them neighborhood bers well the fruit market that used to Taormina family, C: gathering places. None were as crucial operate outside the store’s window: present. Central Grocery, : as the French Market, which was always “Across the street was Sala fruit stand... present. Angelo Brocato’s Gelateria and Bakery, . the largest and served as a distribution all stacked up and decorated. What it was, C: hub for the smaller neighborhood was just stalls where they would pile Salvatore Segreto’s PP: markets as well as for the corner grocer- crates of stu¡ to put their...fruit and nuts Saloon and Restaurant, Ruffi no’s Bakery, C: ies that dotted the city’s landscape. and dried fruit, but mostly produce. And c. or s. s; Ruffi no’s acob Cusimano’s macaroni Many New Orleanians still retain some each one would have their stall area. One Restaurant, ss. factory, c. . memory of the French Market before its stand was after the next. They were all 1970s transformation into a strictly in competition with each other, but [they whatever.” Her father, who operated the rest to us at home.” tourist zone, but those memories are far all] had their calling, they had their draw.” Napoleon House, knew most of the Seafood and meat were just as import- removed from what existed in the late “If you wanted a certain amount of vendors. “He’d after work a lot of times ant as produce in the French Market of nineteenth century. As American cities something,” explained Maria Impastato, go get a crate of whatever was in season that era. Meat has made a signifi cant are concerned, New Orleans is old, and “they’d let you take what you wanted, and go deliver it to my aunt on Dumaine, comeback at farmers’ markets around the land uses here have changed signifi cant- you didn’t have to buy a whole bushel of bring some over here, and then bring the country today as consumer demand for

36 | southernfoodways.org S 2018 | 37 French Market, c. 1906. it was so delicious I went there every Wednesday to get a big bowl of tripe.” But Segreto knew that the market had been even more fascinating in his father’s and grandfather’s time.

€‚ ƒ„ 1920†, †ƒ. ˆ„‰Š‰ˆ †ƒƒ had emerged as the gravitational center of the Sicilian French Quarter, a cultural CC landscape all but disappeared today save for the presence of Matassa’s Grocery at the intersection of Dauphine and for Irene’s Restaurant, at Chartres, nearer the C river, on the ground fl oor of what was the Federico macaroni factory. The Italian MOST NEW ORLEANIANS TODAY associate Central Grocery and roots run deep on St. Philip, where both Progress Grocery (closed in 2001) Peter Lamana and his son’s kidnappers with the muffuletta despite the fact lived, where Jacob Cusimano fi rst man- that the sandwich was merely ufactured dry pasta, and where Angelo incidental to both businesses for Piaggio practiced law. Not only was the most of their institutional lives. For most of the city’s countless corner French Quarter far more densely popu- grocers, Progress and Central acted lated than it is today, but 161 of the 171 as the primary wholesalers of all souls who lived on St. Philip Street manner of imported, dry, and fancy heritage breeds and ethically raised stock smell the fish market.” between Decatur and Chartres in 1920 goods in the same way that the grows. Two generations ago, however, Either in the market itself or just adja- were of Italian extraction, and 53 of them French Market operated as the hub for fresh produce, seafood, and meat. “the French Market was full of butchers,” cent to it were stands and restaurants that had been born in Italy. Sicilians were only Indeed, for corner grocers— observed restaurateur Joe Pacaccio. “You offered quick meals. Salvadore “Joe” slightly less dominant in the 600 block of particularly, those operated by might have had a dozen butchers...all Segreto, whose family roots run deep on St. Philip, where the residents included Italians—Decatur Street and the individual shops, hand-cut meat only. All Decatur Street, remembered many of Sylvestro Carollo, known in later-day French Market represented a kind of the different families had a different these places from his youth. “Battistella’s gangland lore as Silver Dollar Sam despite one-stop wholesale food corridor. Perhaps as a result, many New butcher.” Fridays in the pre–Vatican II had a restaurant, it was very prominent his stated profession as a wholesale fruit Orleans Sicilians today cite Central Catholic city were particularly busy: seafood and breakfast place. There was dealer. Not until one crossed over Bourbon Grocery as an institution that “They would come with the trucks of a man named Lala...an Albanese, who had on the way toward Rampart Street did the represents their community’s ongoing shrimp and these big baskets, all that you the most famous barbecue place—barbe- overwhelmingly Italian character of the food traditions. Central is the sole wanted,” noted Tusa. “That was 24/7. cue pork and chicken. It was unbelievably Lower Quarter yield to an increasingly survivor among the once numerous wholesale and retail grocers along Come early, early in the morning, and delicious—sandwiches on a seeded loaf black and mixed-race neighborhood. Decatur Street that traded in they had two or three ice houses there, of bread, Italian bread.... He sold out Echoes remain of the food culture that imported goods, and returning there and the fishermen would come and bring almost every night. That’s how good it thrived here in the early twentieth for a muffuletta or a pint of olive their catches.” John Gendusa, who spent was. And...Roma Restaurant (1003 century, when the aroma of freshly baked salad evokes memories of a time summers delivering bread with his father, Decatur), was a tiny little restaurant next bread drifted over the old cobblestone when Central’s core business lay in gallon cans of “fl ag” olive oil or entire remembered that “you’d be about two door to the French Market Bar that had pavers. In the middle of the 600 block of wheels of cheese, when the clatter of blocks away from the French Market, and the most delicious food and guys would St. Philip, a one-story masonry carriage- the French Market could be heard just you could smell it before you could see come there every day for a special. way with the words “Ru§ no’s Bakery” outside its doors.

it.... Clean as it could be, but you could Wednesday was tripe day...tripe special, Library of Congress Johnson Pableaux stretching above the lintel o¨ ers mute

38 | southernfoodways.org S 2018 | 39 Unloading bananas testimony to the fabled muffuletta loaves Like macaroni, the muffuletta loaf in New Orleans, c. 1903. that once issued forth from its ovens. Most eventually found its way into the diet of devotees of New Orleans cuisine recog- a broader spectrum of New Orleanians, nize muffuletta as the sandwich found on but the bread took longer and did so only numerous city menus and identified as the vehicle for layers of capicola and around the world with the Central provolone and a generous heaping of Grocery. But the name actually comes olive salad. The story of its baking is akin from the bread itself, a browned, airy, to the narrative of Sicilian New Orleans Sicilian-style loaf about ten inches across writ large, a multigenerational endeavor and topped with sesame seeds. Customers whose objective lies at the intersection would buy the cheese and salami sepa- of commercial enterprise and cultural rately, explains former baker Nick Logu- expression. In 1913, Nocolo Evola, a mu- idice, “and the only bread they had was sician by trade, came to New Orleans and the muffuletta bread so they took it off married Stephana “Fannie” Ruffino, one the shelf, unwrapped it, cut it, put the stuff of Giuseppe Ruffino’s ten children, and on it. Then they would put olive salad on entered the baking business with his it, ’cause that’s what their condiments brothers and father-in-law, who had were, and wrap it back up. Well, the Amer- started the enterprise in 1895. When the ican people see that and said, ‘Well gimme bakery at 625 St. Philip shut down in the one like that.’ When they took it home, 1950s and gave way to Ruffino’s Restau- the wrapper on the bread said ‘muffulet- rant, Evola moved on. He and his son-in- ta.’ . . . They didn’t have a sign saying that’s law continued baking the muffuletta loaf, what they sold—that’s all they sold.” eventually establishing United Bakery at Loguidice’s great-grandfather, Gi- 1325 St. Bernard Avenue. For a half a useppe Ruffino, came to New Orleans in century, United Bakery was the supplier the 1890s and began baking the muffulet- of muffuletta loaves to the city’s most ta on St. Philip Street for sale to his coun- famous purveyors of the sandwich. The end of the Quarter. Some observers might trymen. One can imagine a street peddler, floodwaters that poured through the criticize this e™ ort to reimagine the life his cart clattering slowly down Chartres failed Corps of Engineers levees and filled of the French Quarter as unchaining the or Ursulines, only blocks from the bakery, the lower parts of the city with a stagnant      storied neighborhood from its working crying out, “Muffuletta! Caldo de caldo!” murk in the days following Hurricane that once existed now remains only in past, but in reality, by 1965, most of that (Hot, hot! Muffulettas!). Bread was an Katrina in 2005 not only drowned the memories. What thrives in the Vieux history had already gone elsewhere or essential ingredient in the Sicilian im- machinery at United Bakery but also stole Carré today is almost entirely the product evaporated entirely. The Italian kids migrant’s diet, and fresh bread like the the will to continue from its proprietor, of conscious changes implemented in growing up in the Quarter during the loaves sold by Ruffino could be found in Sal Loguidice, Nick Evola’s grandson. the 1970s by the mayoral administration 1950s could not have known that they numerous storefronts in the Italian Today, the sandwiches at Central Grocery, of Maurice “Moon” Landrieu. These belonged to the last generation of New Colony. Lest we be too nostalgic, con- the Napoleon House, and other estab- plans constituted a reaction to the pro- Orleanians to witness fi rsthand the com- temporary outsiders viewed this subcul- lishments come served on muffuletta found demographic, technological, eco- mercial dialogue that had governed life ture as a problem in need of correction. loaves baked at the Gentilly bakery of nomic, and social changes that had ren- in the city’s oldest sector since the day One July afternoon in 1909, the city John Gendusa, whose family made its dered obsolete the life patterns that had that Bienville fi rst stepped ashore on the health officer made a sweep of shops in own important contribution to the culi- once governed the Italian-dominated banks of the Mississippi. violation a recent law requiring that nary legacy of New Orleans when it in- bread sellers protect their loaves from vented the poor boy loaf for Martin Excerpted from Creole Italian: Sicilian Immigrants and the Shaping of New flies with wrappers, screens, or a glass Brothers in the 1920s. Though Gendusa’s Orleans Food Culture, by Justin Nystrom. Forthcoming from the University of case. A circumnavigation of Ursulines bread makes an admirable sandwich, Georgia Press, © 2018. Reprinted with permission. and St. Philip Streets resulted in fifteen old-timers often note that the United loaf

violators, fourteen of them Italian. was a difficult act to follow. Library of Congress Justin Nystrom is an associate professor of history at Loyola University New Orleans.

40 | southernfoodways.org S 2018 | 41 THE TAKING OF

In New Orleans, losing a way of life by maurice carlos ruffin 43 Summer 2018 The sun rises on an empty stretch of Freret Street at the intersection with Upperline, a rare sight on the newly popular commercial corridor. commercial corridor centered on Freret unremarkable near Audubon Park where Street. Like my street, Freret was under- Tulane and Loyola University students capitalized. Many of the storefronts were exercised, where I usually ran laps. But vacant. The restaurants that operated this was my street. My dad, an ex-tank before the storm were no-frills establish- driver in the Army, once told me he didn’t ments. But we loved them. They were feel safe coming to my neighborhood. mostly black-owned. You knew it by the But over time, walkers, joggers, bicyclists, THERE IS A 2011 VIDEO OF ME ONLINE THAT I’M ASHAMED OF. food. During law school, my wife and I even mothers with strollers would In the footage, I’m cheerful, animated. In my orange and black polo shirt, I look a often stopped at Dunbar’s Creole Kitchen become a common sight on the streets bit like Tigger from Winnie the Pooh. Off camera, someone asks about my hope for for fried chicken with jambalaya or red around my house, as if the tony Uptown the future of my hometown, New Orleans. I’m giddy. “I think if you come to New beans and rice with pork chops. We neighborhood had acquired my street in Orleans right now,” I say with an eighty-eight-key grin, “you’re going to find people stopped at Antoine’s Bakery for almond a sale I didn’t profit from. who want to help you.” The city was still recovering from Hurricane Katrina and cake and cookies. During Mardi Gras, Nearly half of my original neighbors the levee failures. I wanted to attract people who could save the day. With the benefit they served the only king cake I fanta- did not return post-Katrina. Rents went of hindsight, I realize I had no idea what an influx of folks might mean. In a city sized about, the perfect balance of gooey up, so the unemployed or underemployed divided by race and class, I wished for a legion of woke newcomers to help bridge bread and hyper-sweet icing. I ate mine could not afford to return. Some home- the divide. Maybe I should have known better. with chocolate milk. Neither Dunbar’s owners were stiffed by insurance com- nor Antoine’s would come back post- panies that refused to pay out despite In the earliest days of the recovery for breakfast, pho for lunch, and roasted storm. Change was on the menu. collecting premiums for decades. Others after the events of Hurricane Katrina, bone marrow for dinner, options that The first shift I noticed was around couldn’t navigate the complicated gov- there had been talk of giving up on neigh- weren’t readily available before. But 2010. Returning from work, I saw a young ernment loan programs that poured borhoods like Gentilly and the Lower something was wrong. white woman jogging near my house. hundreds of millions of dollars into com- Ninth Ward. Let those areas devolve to When my wife and I bought our house This would have been completely mercial projects in the Central Business green space, people said. Displaced fam- in the Central City neighborhood in 2003, ilies can find somewhere else to live, the neighborhood wasn’t inviting. Yes, A recently built house towers over a traditional double-shotgun home on Valence Street. Six-foot-tall fences, increasingly common in post-Katrina people said. Around town streets suffered our next-door neighbor had been a high New Orleans, separate the newer home from its neighbors. the jack-o’-lantern effect: an occupied school principal and kept her home im- house here, an empty lot there. With so maculate. But the corner dwelling was many people gone, New Orleans seemed tumbledown with flayed siding and a like a sickly patient, smaller, quieter, slumped brick staircase. Our other next- weakened. I wondered whether the city door neighbors drove a massive 1970s would survive. But by 2011, the electrical Suburban that belched gray smoke. They grid was mostly restored, and the water kept a pit bull in the backyard near our said to be lead-free. We were the fastest bedroom that never barked until my head growing city in America. It was obvious touched the pillow. But all my neighbors that the patient would not die, that last were black like me. I would later under- rites would not be given, that the city stand that it was a quality of modern would get up and dance again. We had segregation that threw us together reason to hope. despite our socioeconomic differences. We natives—who managed to rebuild We defined a classless society in which our houses—were ecstatic. I was ecstat- a lawyer, a retired principal, itinerant ic. In the video, that hope is apparent. renters, and a house full of unemployed I’m about thirty pounds heavier than I people live shoulder to shoulder. Black am now. It’s a good thirty pounds. communities have long been shaped by Weight I packed on trying all the new redlining, restrictive covenants, and restaurants that had popped up. Six other forms of discrimination. Photos by Erica Kane Gutter credit years after the storm, I could eat migas A few blocks over lay the mostly fallow Photos by Erica Kane Gutter credit

44 | southernfoodways.org Summer 2018 | 45 fuel the hospitality industry needed a everywhere. Our grandparents stuffed low-cost way to fill up before their shifts. shrimp in them and made it a holiday. Freret Street PoBoy had it all. Fried Once those chain-link fences were torn chicken plates, smothered pork chops, down for high wooden walls, the mirliton grits, eggs, and sausage. My household had nothing to hang on and largely dis- was partial to their delicious apple frit- appeared.” Darlene had pinpointed the ters, which were big and crusty. You got connection between the choice of so your money’s worth. But in late 2017, I many New Orleanians to build fences was out for a jog when I noticed someone you could see through versus high-col- picked the mushroom. The shop was lared bulwarks to blot out the world. A gone. Up the block, a new effrontery. desire to isolate killed the mirliton. Someone decided to build a Starbucks. My grandparents’ house in the Lower New Orleans can be an insular city with Ninth Ward had chain-link fences, as did a small-town mentality. We cherish our the houses of many of my aunts and institutions. An ice-cream shop that dates uncles. They all included mirlitons in back to the Roosevelt Administration their toolbox of soul food ingredients. My (Teddy, not Franklin). Several restaurants parents and my mother-in-law also made with roots predating the Civil War. A bar great stuffed mirlitons, which looked like that was arguably here before America oversized green tulips crammed with a was founded. As a native who has traveled beef, shrimp, and vegetable dressing. extensively, I’ve always thought we had Many an afternoon, I sat at their tables LEFT TO RIGHT: Morning sunlight illuminates the front porch of a family home at 1527 Freret St. fewer chain restaurants, bars, and coffee chomping on the savory, palm-sized in Uptown New Orleans; A house on the corner of Soniat and LaSalle Streets, shops than most cities. The introduction treats. You could blindfold me, and I’d be a block away from the original Dat Dog location on Freret St. of a billion-dollar coffee corporation to a able to tell you which oven they came

District but proved virtually inaccessible did not return to the city. I lost friends, for many homeowners. Some families strangers, and, bit by bit, a way of life. ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND restored their homes only to be priced I knew the city was changing, but I didn’t out by rising property taxes and up- know how widespread it was or if others BLACK NEW ORLEANIANS DID side-down mortgages. saw what I saw. I asked friends. Marti NOT RETURN TO THE CITY The New Orleans Data Center says my Dumas, a children’s book author, mother, neighborhood saw some of the largest and New Orleans native, saw it, too. AFTER HURRICANE KATRINA. population increases between 2010 and “Freret Street has become unrecog- 2017 adding one thousand new house- nizable,” Dumas said. “Tiny improve- holds. My block reflects this truth. A ments snowballed in just a few years into quiet neighborhood corner—my neigh- from. My family scooped out the innards group of students moved in a few doors a place that no longer holds any of the borhood corner—is disturbing. People of the vegetable and stuffed it with a mix down. A family of four took over the original businesses, businesses that had come to New Orleans for our quirky, heavy on the beef, like hamburgers on a house where the pit bull used to bark all survived years of relatively low traffic. It original establishments. Not the flat white vegetable bun. My mother-in-law’s were night. A local politician purchased, razed, seems bizarre that more foot traffic and they had in the airport on the way down. based on her mother’s recipe. Their mir- and replaced the corner tumbledown attention to the area would make it But Starbucks is just a symptom. It’s the litons were mostly breading and shrimp. with a gorgeous ranch-style house that harder for these businesses to stay afloat.” end stage of a cultural flattening. Much more delicate than what I grew up faces away from the street, as if the owner After the storm, Freret was slow to Darlene Wolnik talked to me about on. I loved them all. didn’t like looking at the three black attract new commerce. Freret Street how what we eat has been altered. She Many post-Katrina restaurants have families that surrounded the new house. PoBoy and Donut Shop, a classic work- explained how mirlitons represent my something in common: pretensions. Not a single person or family who bought ing-class New Orleans eatery, sprung up changing hometown. “Back when the They are well-capitalized, well-lit, and into my block since Katrina is black. One like a morning mushroom. Those waiters, city had hundreds of chain-link fences, probably well-insured. When their hundred thousand black New Orleanians housecleaners, and streetcar drivers who mirliton vines thrived and could be found owners went to the bank and asked for

46 | southernfoodways.org Summer 2018 | 47 loans, they got the cash. When they dogs, the newish place that sells $12 lamb called on parents and friends for invest- burgers, and the newish place that sells ment capital, checks must have come in a nearly $30 charcuterie board. But there the mail. Dreams blossomed. Nothing was a restaurant before the storm that was deferred. sold $0.99 breakfast plates to service This contrasts to the experiences of industry workers. An egg, a sausage link, many black business owners. Studies a biscuit and grits. This restaurant, at the indicate blacks at present have about five corner of Washington and Simon Bolivar percent of the wealth assets of their avenues, was black-owned and didn’t white counterparts. There are excep- have tables. I’m not sure it even had a tions, but the few iconic black restaurants name. But I loved it, too. And like so many in town generally served great food but others it’s gone. I wonder what one of looked as if they were operating on the those workers thought the first time they thinnest possible stream of income. I’m saw that charcuterie board. Did they feel reminded of Barrow’s, a shack dating to like an outcast in their own neighbor- the 1940s where wild-caught, exquisite- hood? I didn’t. At least not entirely. I ly fried catfish was the specialty. The could afford the charcuterie, which I ate interior of the restaurant, which was and loved. I felt that I was somehow on opened by William Barrow and taken both sides of the line: a gentrifier and a over by his son Billy, was covered in casualty of gentrification. 1970s-style wood paneling, which gave Writer Fatima Shaik says, “When we it the feel of a beloved godmother’s den. don’t interact, we’re all poorer for it.” Billy Barrow died in the 1990s in an ac- Shaik’s family has lived in the area since Chicken Mart, a small butcher shop & grocery, sits empty shortly before opening for the day. cident and his family continued the the late nineteenth century. She’s seen to happen in stages. An economically Jones, who moved to North Carolina, is depressed neighborhood sees the arrival introspective. “It makes me wonder what I FELT THAT I WAS SOMEHOW of white bohemians, poets, writers, effect all this growth, all this rejuvenation, sculptors, printmakers, and folk musi- is having on the city and its residents. Part ON BOTH SIDES OF THE LINE: cians. Then a young, professional-class of me wants to be excited, to be happy for A GENTRIFIER AND A CASUALTY family arrives, perhaps with a child and those who are doing well. But a larger part a modest trust fund in tow. Soon they are of me is unable to ignore that some people OF GENTRIFICATION. joined by others. A trickle becomes a are getting pushed out, and some of the flood. Then banks heavily invest, spur- people who are doing well are doing so ring the kind of shifts we have seen on because others were pushed out. And I tradition. But Katrina destroyed the much change and thinks we should be Freret Street and elsewhere. feel guilty for unintentionally being part eatery. A replacement location on the prepared for more. “We’ll see inequalities The poet Kelly Jones is one of many of that.” other side of the river did not last long. we weren’t aware of before. You’ll see white residents who were pushed out by Jones has their guilt, as I have mine. By contrast, the new establishments how legal systems work. You’ll see how rising living expenses. They and their Talking to Jones makes me realize that on and around Freret serve fair-trade tax systems work.” husband worked hard. But they couldn’t although we are complicit, larger forces coffee. One has a high-temperature pizza Gentrification is accelerating beyond keep up. “I was working five part-time are at work. These forces affect people oven that probably cost more than some New Orleans. Brooklyn, Harlem, San jobs in order to make the rent and cover who would seem to be above it all. People of the old restaurants cleared in a year. Francisco, Amsterdam, and Berlin resi- bills.” Jones saw the changes coming. They like John Boutté, the singer. Boutté is a There’s a shop that sells blue-crab dents know this. They also probably were occasionally asked by out-of-towners local institution. He’s known for his omelets and coconut nectar. That one know that although racism and white whether New Orleans was a place they velvety voice and stage presence. He sang has a yoga studio above it. Namaste. Full supremacy are frequently intertwined liked to live. They always hesitated because the theme song to the New Orleans–set disclosure: I love this place. Just like I with these changes, gentrification affects although they loved the city, they didn’t HBO show Treme and stole a scene at love the newish place that sells $8 hot non-blacks as well. Gentrification tends want to encourage others to relocate. the end of season one. Boutte lived in the

48 | southernfoodways.org Summer 2018 | 49 The former location of heart of Treme, the neighborhood, but Villere said that market forces would Freret St. PoBoy and no longer saw the logic in paying steadi- determine the outcome of the gentrifi- Donut Shop, which closed ly increasing rent. He purchased a house cation process. Those forces would in November 2017. an hour away on the far side of Lake replace blight with business and ensure Pontchartrain. “Everyone has always that every property fulfilled its best use. wanted to live here,” he said of New Villere is factually correct. Market forces Orleans. “There are always people who drive development and innovation. De- want to take advantage of disasters.” velopment and innovation give us shiny But some who sought to take advantage gelaterias and pizzerias that crank out of the changes have fallen victim to them. pies in one hundred eighty seconds. Gentrification arrived earlier in areas I don’t know what market forces say like the Marigny, Bywater, and Treme. about the driving out of families and Well-appointed restaurants like Maure- restaurants that carried on the foodways pas, Oxalis, and Café Henri shuttered of New Orleans without pretension. after relatively short lives. The cause? Market forces didn’t destroy Dunbar’s The restaurateurs thought they were or Antoine’s Bakery so much as displace opening approachable places for neigh- them. Like Barrow’s, Antoine’s landed borhood people. But out-of-towners in Jefferson Parish on the other side of bought houses in these neighborhoods the Mississippi River, about six miles and converted them to Airbnb inventory. away. After several moves, including a The tourists had no taste for neighbor- term as the in-house cafeteria at Loyola hood restaurants. They wanted to dine Law School, Dunbar’s claimed an unas- Uptown or in the French Quarter as suming plot next to a pizza chain. I’m they’d been instructed. glad to know that I can get their fried This cycle of events would appear to be chicken, gumbo, and jambalaya, but I’m unsustainable. Often, when a beloved spot bothered that the only way to get a slice closes, it’s replaced by something more of fresh almond cake from Antoine’s is homogenous, a gastropub one might find to leave New Orleans. I’m reminded of in downtown Manhattan or a franchised what John Boutte said when I asked sandwich shop. When visitors arrive in whether he was mad about the changes. New Orleans to find the same food they “I won’t say I’m mad,” he said. “My ate at home, those visitors might decide grandmother said only dogs get mad. to travel elsewhere. If all the local restau- There is a sense of loss that the older rants die out, no one will come. Everyone people can’t live out their lives in their will suffer. Boutte says he isn’t too upset homes. Their kids can’t either. But about the upheavals. “There’s no need to change is the fabric of the city.” To para- burn it down,” he said. “Just wait it out. phrase James Baldwin, to live in New The bubble is going to pop.” Orleans and be relatively conscious is to I wish I could be as sanguine as Boutte. be in a rage most of the time. My rage is Gentrification couldn’t be all bad. Could tempered by the resilience of my city, it?, I asked Jean-Paul Villere, a realtor which still makes a delicious stuffed with an office on Freret. mirliton.

Maurice Carlos Ruffin is the nonfiction columnist forVirginia Quarterly Review. His work has also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Kenyon Review, and Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas. One World Random House will publish

his novel, We Cast A Shadow, in 2019. Gutter credit

50 | southernfoodways.org Summer 2018 | 51 B Louisiana’s Southeast Asian American fisherwomen foster a way of life BY SIMI KANG

An Sandy Ha Nguyen on a cool february morning, i arrived in buras, louisiana, a fishing town an hour and a half south of New Orleans, to learn about the trials of commercial shrimping in a post-Deepwater Horizon landscape. Sitting at the dining room table in his double-wide trailer, Phan Plork shared the highs and lows of twenty-plus years of shrimping: watching Industry’s the land wash away, building two boats by hand, participating in the BP cleanup effort, and nurturing five children whom he discouraged from learning the trade. He wanted them to attend college and develop skills on land, far from the day-to-day trials of hard labor, constant disaster, and regulatory changes. As he told story after story, Phan’s wife, Tal, nodded Heartbeat from the kitchen, adding detail and texture to his memories while she charred vegetables and split bones, starting a pho broth in a stock pot big

Photos by Claire Bangser enough to feed a congregation.

52 | southernfoodways.org Summer 2018 | 53 The Plorks are leaders in Buras’ Cam- shrimp and hauling nets alongside her bodian community. As elders at Trinity husband. From their arrival to Louisi- United Methodist Church, they provide ana’s Gulf Coast, Southeast Asian Ameri- food for gatherings, head fundraising can women have occupied complex roles efforts, and sing in the choir. While as caretakers, earners, and partners, pro- Phan spends much of his time on his viding the bedrock for a rich communal primary boat, the Five Star, named in relationship to place and industry. honor of their children, Tal volunteers at the church, looks after a handful of toddler-aged grandchildren, and, with her husband, organizes the area’s annual Cambodian New Year celebration. FOR THE LAST TWO AND A HALF As our conversation came to an end, years, I have worked with Sandy Nguyen Tal offered me a bottle of water and a at Coastal Communities Consulting, Inc. piece of cake. Holding onto her husband’s (CCC), the only nonprofit in southeast shoulder and smiling down at him, she Louisiana devoted to helping com- explained that it’s important to share mercial fishing businesses survive and these stories, both of triumph and strug- thrive. Sandy has been my guide in my gle, to preserve knowledge for the next scholarship of the industry and region. generation. As I followed her from office to dock, Vietnamese and Cambodian Amer- home to boat, to learn how her clients ican fisherfolk1 make up almost forty respond to changing environmental, percent of Louisiana’s shrimp fishery. economic, and political circumstances, Since being resettled in New Orleans it became clear that few others could do East following the American evacuation what Sandy does. of Saigon in 1975 or fleeing the Pol Pot Today, fishermen struggle as shrimp regime in Cambodia, the state’s Southeast grow smaller and fewer, foreign imports Asian and Southeast Asian American2 increase, and their community ages. community has become central to the Add more hurricanes, a disintegrating local economy. Much of the early capital coastline, and regular oil spills, and the for today’s Southeast Asian American– future looks bleak for fisherfolk and owned corner stores, dentist offices, their families. For Southeast Asian and restaurants, nail salons, and other small Southeast Asian American communi- businesses was first generated on a boat. ties, language barriers and a reliance on From their earliest trips, whole fami- informal economies further limit their lies have labored on these boats. When access to support like disaster payouts a captain couldn’t afford a deckhand, and loans. Sandy’s knowledge of these his wife would jump on board, sorting plights comes not from her role at CCC,

1I use the gender-neutral term “fisherfolk” when writing about the commercial fishing industry as a whole to acknowledge that it extends beyond the discreet spaces of fishing boats and processing docks to the home and family, and as such, its success relies on the labor of all genders. 2I use both “Southeast Asian” and “Southeast Asian American” to indicate the myriad generations— first, 1.5 (or folks born in Southeast Asia but who arrived in the United States as children), and second—of peoples of Southeast Asian heritage who work in the industry. Many first-generation fisherfolk prefer to call themselves “Vietnamese,” “Cambodian,” or “Asian” over “Asian American,” a designation that sometimes feels more appropriate for later generations (who themselves sometimes Noert Huon of self-identify as the former rather than the latter). Buras, Louisiana A | southernfoodways.org Summer 2018 | 55 Fishing boats wait at the docks in Buras, a fishing town an hour and a half south of New Orleans. When a captain couldn’t afford a deckhand, his wife would jump on board, sorting shrimp and hauling nets alongside her husband.

56 Summer 2018 | 57 but through first-hand experiences as research to help her elders. In high school a fisherwoman. Boat owner, daughter, and college, she kept a mental calendar of wife, and mother, she has made it her filing dates for licenses and taxes, while life’s work to maintain fishing families developing new knowledge of citizenship like hers. applications and business accounting. Sandy is intimately familiar with the In ninth grade, Sandy began offering power of fisherfolk. Her family evacu- low-cost and free English language ser- ated from Vietnam in 1979, fleeing to vices to fellow refugees, helping them Malaysia on her father’s fishing boat. navigate licenses, deeds, and other When Malaysian officials refused entry, complex paperwork. To this day, industry Sandy’s father purposefully sank the paperwork is not available in Khmer or boat just offshore. Under maritime law, Vietnamese. he knew, the Malaysian government had Following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita to rescue his family of refugees from that in 2005, she recognized that her com- capsized boat, no matter their nation- munity needed sustained, targeted help. ality or asylum status. This resourceful Leveraging skills she gained while earning mentality served him well in Louisiana. a business degree at Tulane University, she Relying on small loans from Southeast stepped in after the Deepwater Horizon Asian refugees who resettled a few years catastrophe of 2010 to help Southeast earlier, he worked to buy his own boat. Asian fisherfolk receive compensation When he retired, he passed the boat on for the income they lost during the three- to Sandy’s husband, Mike. month shrimping season. Recognizing the That resourcefulness has served Sandy, depth of community need in the imme- FROM LEFT: Anne Nguyen, social service coordinator; Sandy Ha Nguyen, executive director; Cristina Duong, senior technical assistance coordinator; Katrina Williams, program staff assistant too. Vowing to support her nuclear and diate aftermath of that accident—and the extended family in whatever ways she ensuing months of devastating underem- could, Sandy spent her high school years ployment, anxiety, and depression—she work in both familial and professional studying the intricacies of fishery-specific opened CCC’s doors in 2010. CCC’s staff, settings, almost all fisherwomen take on regulations. Learning by doing, she made four women of color, offer ESL and cit- a third full-time job. Working beyond the cold calls to state offices and did meticulous izenship classes, business support, and AS IN MOST COMMERCIAL FISH- boat, wives, sisters, and mothers main- translation and interpretation services ing families, Southeast Asian and South- tain the heart of all family businesses: in Khmer and Vietnamese. They also east Asian American fishermen are the the finances. Following promise a nuanced understanding of fish- primary external earners. They cover erfolks’ personal and economic struggles. mortgage payments and college tuition. Hurricanes Katrina Today, Sandy calls herself the “second They build family equity by reinvest- wife” of “her” fishermen. Putting thou- ing in their boats, from basic repairs to TO MAKE SENSE OF THE ROLE and Rita in 2005, sands of miles on her sturdy truck each quick-freezing technology. While women women play in southeast Louisiana’s year, she spends time at shrimping docks, raise children, keep the home, and commercial fishing industry, Sandy Sandy Nguyen restaurants, community gardens, and nurture their family’s emotional health, invited me to observe CCC’s annual tax family homes to share knowledge. Sandy they also do professional work as wait- exemption process. recognized that also works with other nonprofit leaders, resses, nail technicians, office managers, I watched as couple after couple fil- advocating for her clients at the state and healthcare providers. Their income tered through the office, finding seats her community and federal level. She and the women of often covers utility bills and groceries. among friends in one of two lines. The CCC are their most visible and accessible From the outside, it might look as first led to a CCC staff member who needed sustained, advocates in southeast Louisiana. CCC is though men address most of their fam- would translate tax documents and the first place state officials and national ilies’ economic needs. Southeast Asian help them file correctly; the second, to targeted help. press turn when they want to understand wives disrupt this easy equation. In a representative of the Louisiana De- and address the industry. addition to their full-time, year-round partment of Revenue, who would issue

58 | southernfoodways.org Summer 2018 | 59 a sales tax exemption to defray the cost several years. Sandy and her staff use the of repairing boats during the January to group to learn more about the women’s “You’ll seldom see a April off-season. As the women settled personal and professional aspirations, ON A HOT JULY EVENING, SANDY in for a long wait, they draped arms creating a space to share economic devel- and I attended a Vietnamese-language successful fisherman across chairs to chat and smacked their opment opportunities. Around kitchen meeting in Buras, where Phan and Tal husbands conspiratorially on the back tables, they talk late into the night about Plork live and many of CCC’s clients without a wife, when they told a good joke. Every wife grants and loans, identify skills the dock their boats. The meeting was run held a bulky file folder, filled with ev- women would like to develop, and share by Louisiana’s Office of Community De- because they are the erything from trip tickets documenting news of potential off-the-water jobs. velopment (OCD) and the Foundation daily catches to detailed family expenses. “You’ll seldom see a successful fisherman for Louisiana (FFL). It was one of five true backbone of the While men overwhelmingly did the work without a wife, because they are the true scheduled in Buras to roll out Louisi- of fishing, these file folders revealed that backbone of the industry,” Sandy said at ana’s Strategic Adaptations for Future industry,” Sandy women did a great deal behind the scenes the close of a recent meeting. “I’ve only Environments (LA SAFE) initiative, to make that work possible. seen a couple of commercial fishermen meant to “create a community-focused Nguyen says. This sort of accounting requires in- make it without a woman beside him.” resilience and adaptation policy frame- dustry-specific knowledge, including As entrepreneurs and matriarchs, South- work.” By addressing rapid coastal land seasonal openings and closures, licensure east Asian and Southeast Asian American loss and resulting home and business expiration dates, and broader regulatory fisherwomen secure the industry’s eco- flooding, LA SAFE hoped to identify feeling optimistic. “You throw anything shifts. Fisherwomen get this data direct- nomic present and address its uncertain how, given community-specific barri- at our fisher[folk], they’ll take a minute, ly from CCC. In addition to organizing future. While answering the question, ers to what the state calls resilience, understand, and adjust. They’ll do what meetings specifically for fisherwomen, “How will I feed my family next year?” they Southeast Asian and Southeast Asian they need to make it work.” Glancing at CCC has run informal fishermen’s wives focus intently on teaching their children American coastal residents could secure me, she punctuated her statement with a groups in Vietnamese and Khmer for to feed their own in the decades to come. a future along the coast. quick elbow to my ribs and a smile. “You I joined May Nguyen at one of fifteen feel me?” I did. crowded tables where fisherfolk and Fishermen can feel the Gulf; anchoring Phuong Lu, a fisherwoman in Buras, harvests lettuce in a local garden. other residents ate fried rice and chè, their boats in place hours before they a sweet pudding. A fierce community intend to begin fishing, captains and advocate who helps underserved Louisi- deckhands often nap, waking natural- anians respond to disaster, coastal crisis, ly as they intuit the tide changing and and state neglect through the Tulane the shrimp coming in, ready to catch. Environmental Law Clinic, May trans- Like their husbands, fisherwomen have lated as I took notes. While fishermen learned the intricacies of the industry’s addressed business-related and infra- land-based economic and communal structural issues like repaving roads foundations. Refusing easy categories, and replacing broken streetlights, fish- Southeast Asian and Southeast Asian erwomen eloquently identified broader American wives, daughters, and elders community needs. write checks, memorize regulations, Advocating for healthcare facilities, work second shifts, and care for their community gardens, green spaces for rec- families. Through environmental and reation, ESL services, and education and industry upheaval, their tireless care and job training initiatives, women drove the knowledge promise a vibrant future for conversation. Their resilience left Sandy Louisiana, its coast, and its people.

Simi Kang is a scholar, artist, educator, and community advocate who engages Asian American collaborative resistance as a site for imagining ecologically and economically just futures. She is a Ph.D. Candidate in feminist studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

Summer 2018 | 61 Icons

of high school, when I watched Karen some were minor heartbreaks from boy- Black pine for Jack Nicholson in the 1970 friends, others as seismic as a parent’s film Five Easy Pieces. Though the song death. When I listened to Wynette, I only played in the background, the mel- could hear parts of myself, past and THE QUEER ancholy in Black’s eyes came through future, as if she understood where I was Wynette’s shattered voice, tattooed with and where I’d be going. bruises I was too young recognize. PLEASURES My identification with Wynette may i don’t know what it is about many strike some as odd, for we were demo- queer men and their attraction to divas— graphic opposites: Wynette was born to their heartbreaks and their elation. It OF TAMMY a family of farmers in Itawamba County, may be that female icons can express Mississippi, in 1942. I was born in 1992 aspects of femininity we coach ourselves to Bengali immigrants in New Jersey, my to willfully suppress. When it came to WYNETTE’S skin browner than Wynette’s could ever her music, Wynette’s ability to clearly be, even if it baked under the Nashville articulate her misery felt aspirational sun. She was prolifically heterosexual, to me as I was slowly admitting my own COOKING having wed five different men in her life. attraction to men. I knew, even then, How the country star’s I could not imagine ever being in a het- that expressing my queerness would music conveyed an erosexual marriage. lead to its own kind of pain. Wynette’s unexpected sensibility Months after first hearing the song, I whiteness, in theory, could have dis- saw a video of Wynette, dressed in fla- tanced me from her, but her anguish BY MAYUKH SEN mingo-pink sequins, poodle hair fastened brought me closer. So did her projection to her scalp like a motorcycle helmet, of femininity—and, by extension, joy. singing the song on a movie-set porch. She seemed to highlight the parts of ome women are doomed to Tammy Wynette Southern Cookbook, Her face was sober and impassive, barely myself I’d worked to silence, rooted in be misunderstood their whole published in 1990. Leafing through it for registering the pain that surely ran deep. my anxiety over my gayness and how I S lives. With Tammy Wynette, the the first time last summer was like taking Eventually, I learned Wynette’s trag- expressed it. misperceptions persist in death. The a trip to a foreign country that welcomed edies. Her father died of a brain tumor The Tammy Wynette Southern Cook- First Lady of Country Music drew her me without hesitation. Her book rejects when she was nine months old, after book gave me a window into what her last breath two decades ago, but people the structure one may associate with a which Wynette’s mother left her in the elation must have looked like. It is an still interpret her most famous single, serious piece of food writing. I love it. care of her parents and decamped for anecdotally sparse book, the drama of 1968’s “Stand by Your Man,” as a song In her music, Wynette sang of heart- Florida. Wynette’s maternal grandpar- her life all but absent. To listen to her that condones spousal infidelity or abuse. ache and loss. Her cookbook pulses with ents raised her alongside her aunt, five music while cooking her recipes is to “I’m not sitting here, some little woman jubilation. She tunneled her way out of years her senior, in a house without inhabit parallel universes. standing by my man like Tammy life’s miseries with cans of cream of running water or toilets. That taxing Her Better-Than-Sex cake asks you to Wynette,” Hillary Clinton, then First chicken soup and jars of mayonnaise childhood gave way to an equally tor- bake a yellow cake mix and then slather Lady of Arkansas, said on 60 Minutes in she’d use to make chicken divan. “When tured adulthood, marred by alleged do- it with frosting made from crushed pine- January 1992. I was a little girl, cooking was what I mestic abuse, a painkiller addiction, and apple and sugar, a layer of instant vanilla Wynette was indignant when she en- did to escape the rigors of picking countless surgeries to correct health pudding, and a large tub of Cool Whip. countered criticism like Clinton’s. “With cotton,” she writes in the introduction. problems. Her triumphs were rooted in The indulgence doesn’t stop there. You all that is in me I resent your caustic “Today I do it to relax and express my struggle. She died of a blood clot in her sprinkle it with nuts and coconut and remark,” she wrote Clinton in response. love for others.” lungs while sleeping on her couch in garnish it with maraschino cherries. I I shudder to think what Wynette’s I first heard “Stand by Your Man” in April 1998, at age fifty-five. can do that, I thought. Barbecued chicken

critics would’ve said of a book like The 2009, the summer before my senior year by BarryIllustrations Lee My tragedies have fallen along a spectrum; with brown sugar mixed with ketchup,

62 | southernfoodways.org Summer 2018 | 63 Icons History

horror the next morning in the fridge once it finally set, a blobfish the color of apricots, but lifted my spoon and dug in. If I had my way, every restaurant in Brooklyn would serve a dump salad instead of a gelato to help wash down a gut-shattering meal. Wynette’s recipes read as thrillingly disobedient to me because they reject the formalities of taste. This makes it easy for Wynette to be misunderstood in a gastronomic landscape of pomp and snobbery, just as she was in other realms. I was thrilled to see her on the Epicurious list of their 100 Best Home Cooks in 2017. The recognition was a validation of the way I cooked. Wynette elevated the embrace of scraps to dizzying, aspira- tional heights. Something about my identification with her kitchen philosophy felt explic- itly queer, too. Wynette’s cooking is born of flamboyance, with flashes of camp. I’m doused in a cup of Coke, and baked for reminded of what Ernest Matthew an hour at three hundred degrees? Sure, Mickler, a gay man, writes in the intro- no problem. Her recipes were guided by duction to his White Trash Cooking, the BARBEKUE a philosophy I understood: Cook well 1986 opus that bulges with Jell-O in How barbecue marked the rise and fall of the Texas Klan with what little you have. Rainbow Icebox Cakes and Cool Whip I have taken a spoon and mixed a can in Yo-Yo Puddin: that Southerners “laugh BY DANIEL VAUGHN of cream of chicken soup with Cheez- at our worst tragedies, and with a gour- Whiz and poured that solution of iri- met’s delight enjoy our simplest meals.” descent slime over a layer of broccoli I have often struggled to understand he rain wouldn’t stop. “to demonstrate the fact that the Klan is and rice laid out in a casserole dish. I what a queer sensibility looks like for Pits filled with water, and the not dead,” the Fort Worth Star-Telegram have walked three blocks to Foodtown me when I cook, because extravagance T stacks of wood soaked through. reported. But when just a fraction of the and bought the cheapest medium-sized can feel so far removed from struggle. The barbecue had to be canceled. The Klan expected attendees showed, it marked tub of cottage cheese I could find, a box In Wynette’s oeuvre, I see a queer sen- celebration would continue, but the rain the last gasp of the Klan as a social and of Kraft orange Jell-O powder, and a sibility. She was a diva who knew how drenched hopes of a more grandiose cer- political force in Texas. bucket of Cool Whip; mixed them in a to cook through life's inevitable pain. emony. Texas Governor Ma Ferguson This is a story about Texas in the 1920s large bowl with a desiccated wooden Cooking was a way of embracing plea- denied them horses for their initiation that remind us of what happens when spoon until my arms throbbed; and sures your life otherwise denies you, ceremony. The year was 1925, and the place overt bigotry becomes socially acceptable. covered it with Saran Wrap. I have like broccoli soufflé sprinkled with Ritz was Arlington, Texas. Klan klaverns 66, During that era, the Klan wrapped their peered at my dump salad with vague cracker crumbs. 101, and 334 from Dallas, Fort Worth, and racist anger in a shroud of morality and Oak Cliff, respectively, had planned the sought acceptance through false patrio-

Mayukh Sen is a food and culture writer based in New York. Arlington Libraries at of Texas University Special Collections, barbecue and accompanying ceremony tism, using massive barbecues to draw

64 | southernfoodways.org Summer 2018 | 65 History

racist, and terrifying, the Klan did much were 25 negroes who were peeling pota- of this under a cloak of strict secrecy. At toes and onions.” Under the glow of a least in the beginning. fifty-foot tall burning cross, black men fed white men whose mission was to prolong at the time, the Klan’s doctrine was and deepen their oppression. only mildly controversial to the conser- A couple of months later in Bonham, vative white public, inspired by The Birth Texas, the barbecue didn’t go so smooth- of a Nation, the D. W. Griffith film. In the ly. “Negros Would not Dig for the Ku Klux fall of 1915, the film began a four-year run Klan,” proclaimed the Sherman Daily in Dallas and Forth Worth theaters. The Democrat headline. The Klan had hired three-hour epic was as devastatingly a group of black men to cook barbecue racist as it was cinematically ground- for an initiation ceremony. When the breaking. President Woodrow Wilson unidentified cooks arrived, no pit had screened it at the White House. The Fort been dug. The Klan organizers had ex- Worth Star-Telegram hosted a mov- pected the black men to do that work, but ie-themed essay contest for school chil- the cooks balked. “In the end,” the dren. The newspaper gifted winners with Sherman Daily Democrat reported, “white tickets to a local screening. men had to be employed to do the work.” The film blamed the South’s post-war In 1922, Texas membership in the Klan upheaval on Northern “carpetbaggers” doubled from 75,000 in January to A Ku Klux Klan gathering in Fort Worth, ca. 1920–21. PREVIOUS: A Masonic barbecue in Breckenridge, Texas, 1921. and portrayed newly elected black politi- 150,000 by the end of the year. As mem- cians as corrupt buffoons. The hooded bership grew, the Klan developed a onlookers and potential recruits with miles north of Matagorda Bay. There he white knights of the original, first-era KKK message that was palatable to skeptical food and drink. Their aim was to normal- saw “a pit as long as the News office con- were the protagonists. In the film, their whites. Large newspaper ads announced ize their group for a curious public who tained the coals that glowed under the final heroic effort was to patrol the elec- meetings, often simply called barbecues. had likely read media accounts of the carcasses of five or six beeves.” The editor tion-day streets on horseback, guns drawn. A 1923 advertisement promised a mem- Klan’s vigilante violence, signature shared a meal with his hosts, but when Wearing full Klan robes, they aimed to bers-only “Big Klan Barbecue” in George- burning crosses, and hooded marches. the initiation of seventy new members keep black voters from reaching the polls. town. The same year the public bought began and the organizers lit a cross, he By June 1922, the Klan had established $.25-seats to a huge Klan initiation during the 1920s, Texas klaverns watched from afar. its presence in Texas. In Waco, the local planned in San Antonio. If you knew a marched along city streets at night, At the conclusion of the barbecue, klavern planned “the largest meeting that without prior notice, and in full Klan Hood’s hooded source, who had a poor had been held in the history of that orga- regalia. At secret initiation ceremonies grasp on irony, told him “the Klan had nization,” according to the Fort Worth in rural areas, heavily armed hooded nothing to hide.” Back then, the Texas Star-Telegram. Fifteen thousand report- At the conclusion figures stood watch at entry points. Klan, which had begun organizing in edly gathered in a field four miles west of of the barbecue, Klaverns often planned these events 1920, wasn’t a socially acceptable club to town to initiate two thousand new around barbecues, at first because it was join. They whipped, beat, and maimed members. The event was closed to the the host, who had a an easy way to feed their members at victims they deemed immoral. They public, but the Klan invited reporters to poor grasp on irony, secluded meetings. Robin Hood, editor threatened preachers and teachers who witness portions of the initiation and enjoy of the Matagorda County News, reported did not teach their lessons in English. the feast, which included “five tons of beef told the reporter from a barbecue in October of 1921. Blacks, Jews, immigrants, and Catholics: and one ton of goat, which were barbecued “the Klan had Stephen F. Austin Klan No. 5 members Anyone from those groups who dated in a pit 900 feet long.” The paper report- drove Hood past armed guards to a field outside their race might be tarred, feath- ed that “among the men preparing nothing to hide.”

outside tiny Clemville, about twenty-five ered, or forced out of town. Brutish, Arlington Libraries at of Texas University Special Collections, for the barbecue Thursday afternoon

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klansman, you could come as their free Public support for once-popular an- guest to the preceding barbecue. ti-Klan laws waned. Protestant ministers In November of 1922, a Dallas dentist became persuasive apologists. Their named Hiram Wesley Evans ousted the agendas of temperance and morality longtime Texas Klan leader William aligned. Klan processions interrupted Joseph Simmons. As the new chief, Evans church services to make symbolic dona- sought political power for the Klan, tions to ministers—imagine the impres- which already held many city govern- sion that made on congregations. Klan ment positions in Fort Worth, Dallas, speaking tours emphasized piety and Wichita Falls, and Waco. Now the Klan their own brand of distorted patriotism. wanted statewide office. “Klan candi- Before large audiences, they stumped for date” Earle Mayfield, an East Texas their preferred political candidates. Can- native, had just been elected to the didates sought Klan endorsements. Being United States Senate. Evans saw the op- labeled the “Klan candidate” was no portunity for more power, but the Klan longer dishonorable. would have to convince the electorate In response to the Klan marches of the that they had shed their terroristic ways. early 1920s, many cities and towns had The organization needed a public rela- enacted anti-masking laws, but the issue tions campaign. didn’t seem to matter as much as the Klan Caleb Ridley, the Klan’s designated became more palatable. By 1923, hoods chaplain, led that public relations effort. weren’t as necessary in public. Fully cos- An Atlanta-based Baptist minister who tumed speakers commonly removed their had begun his career in Beaumont, Texas, hoods on stage. Even initiation events, Ridley toured the country as a Klan once held in strict secrecy, were open to speaker. When questioned about the the public. A newspaper ad for a Klan Klan’s exclusivity, he compared their barbecue in Elgin, Texas, promised, “Ev- membership requirements to that of the erybody Invited.” Texas has a long history Knights of Columbus, a Catholic organi- of large-scale community barbecues to zation that excluded Protestants. The celebrate holidays, civic achievements, message seemed to be “we’re not racist, and milestones. These Klan events were we’re just picky.” built on that model, but were aimed at a Evans denounced the violence commit- far less diverse crowd. Conservative ted by some “rogue” members, and prom- whites didn’t question them. In just three ised that their dedication to law and order years, the shame had disappeared, right would translate as deference to the police. along with the secrecy. The Klan also curried favorable newspa- “The first public Klan ceremonies were per coverage of its charitable donations, austere and mysterious,” wrote Scott M. and tried to align the Klan politically with Cutlip in The Unseen Power. “But as the the temperance movement. Their goal rallies increased in size they became less was “True Americanism.” Recruits who supernatural in character. More and bought their double-speak believed the more Klansmen brought their families. The September 23, 1923 Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported on a massive Klan Klan didn’t dislike or look down on other Barbecues were held to feed the crowds. barbecue held on the shore of Lake Worth in Fort Worth, Texas. groups. They just wanted to fellowship, By 1923, the hours of mystifying ritual at

Special Collections, University of Texas at Arlington Libraries at of Texas University Special Collections, and barbecue, with their own. the initiation came more and more to

68 | southernfoodways.org Summer 2018 | 69 History resemble a high school baccalaureate.” at Fair Park with 25,000 onlookers.” the marchers were a block distant, San initiation ever held in Texas,” and a bar- The Klan held its largest and maybe That day, Evans spoke of “The Menace Angelo’s big electric ‘Welcome’ sign over becue of “125 baby beeves” for 100,000 most widely publicized barbecue on the of Modern Immigration.” The Klan had Chadbourne street, switched off and did klansmen. The universe had other plans. shores of Lake Worth in Fort Worth. spent the previous year or so trying to not blaze again until the robed figures “Kodak Klicks as Klansmen Kook Bar- soften their rhetoric, but the rough edges had departed.” It would become a pro- a rainstorm abruptly ended the bekue and hold Piknik” read the Septem- showed during Evans’ lengthy diatribe. phetic symbol for the Klan in Texas. initiation ceremony. Governor Ma Fer- ber 23, 1923 Fort Worth Star-Telegram In a nativist rant, Evans blamed the na- Ferguson trounced Robertson to guson ordered the removal of National headline. To document the preparation tion’s problems on “illiterate, disease-rid- become the Democratic nominee and de Guard horses. And the Klan called off of sixty-five Hereford steers over a three- den stock” from Italy, Greece, Spain, facto winner. She used the win to include the barbecue. Estimated final atten- hundred-foot-long pit, the Klan called Portugal, and Eastern Europe. His term a specific denouncement of the Klan in dance, per the organizers, was just in the newspaper’s photographer. None for all of these groups, including African the Texas Democrats’ official platform. 15,000. “More than 100 cords of wood of the cooks attempted to hide their iden- Americans, was “unassimilable.” He said But Fort Worth klansmen carried on as which had been placed alongside the tity. In the photos, one wears a badge that they simply lacked the capacity to they had the year prior. They served a barbecue pits became soaked with rain,” fully assimilate and become crowd of 10,000 at a Klan barbecue at the Dallas Morning News reported, “and true Americans. He was Lake Worth, outside Fort Worth. They the pits themselves bore some resem- quick to add, “There is not a staged boxing matches, and klansmen blance to a canal.” semblance of racial hate in closed the event with a sing-a-long and The Dallas and Fort Worth klaverns my heart.” By the numbers, a “battle royal between five negroes,” in had planned a barbecue that would prove the Klan was at its peak in which the losers were “hurled into the the Klan wasn’t dead in Texas. They Texas, but its popularity was gaping waters of Lake Worth.” proved the opposite. The klansmen went about to take a tumble. No matter. Klan membership in Texas home wet and dispirited. While it likely steadily fell, dropping from a height of seemed an eternity for those living the 1924 texas governor’s 150,000 in 1922 to 97,000 in 1924. Within through the oppression, the rapid rise race would prove a monu- two years, membership would plummet and fall of the Second KKK in Texas took mental failure for the Klan. to 18,000. In July of 1925, the Fort Worth only five years. When the Klan tied its Dallas judge Felix Robert- city manager fired all Klan members in promise to politics, and the time came to son had openly accepted the city government. In defiance, according turn the Texas government over to the group’s support. He toured to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the Klan insurrectionists, the electorate spoke. the state, stumping at Klan burned forty “indignation crosses” In our country today, we witness Nazis rallies and barbecues. Ma around Fort Worth, and planned a marching our streets, politicians who that reads “Imperial Chef,” and another, Ferguson was his Democratic competi- massive barbecue celebration for Sep- openly despise immigrants, and preach- “Boneless Meat Kutter.” tion. Banking on a lack of Klan support tember 12 in Arlington. The Texas Mes- ers who act as their apologists. This story The following month in Dallas, the Klan in rural Texas, she ran an anti-Klan and quiter announced that “the biggest Klan about Texas in the 1920s teaches us about got the sort of public recognition they anti-Prohibition platform. A week event ever held in the South” was ex- what can happen when bigotry goes un- wanted when the city dedicated one day before the primary vote in July, the Klan pected with 100,000 attendees and a class challenged. It shows how demagogues at the State Fair as “Klan Day.” The Klan appeared to be gaining a foothold in of one thousand initiates. hide behind patriotism, and lure skeptics distributed applications at the gates. west Texas. But that momentum would On September 11, 1925, the front-page with food and drink. It’s also a reminder During a rodeo event, a bull rider wore a not last. headline of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that people can rise up to declare polit- Klan robe and hood. The WPA Dallas Guide After a secret initiation and barbecue read “Klan Throngs Invade Arlington.” ical platforms built on racism and op- and History described it this way: “Under in San Angelo, a parade proceeded The article promised “the first mounted pression unacceptable. the eyes of Imperial Wizard Hiram W. through downtown. It began in grand Evans, 5,631 male candidates and 800 fashion, but an unidentified hero had Daniel Vaughn is the barbecue editor at Texas Monthly and the author of The women were ‘naturalized’ into the ‘Invis- planned a message for them, according Prophets of Smoked Meat. He has eaten at over 1,500 barbecue joints, most of

ible Empire’ before the grandstand to a Dallas Morning News report. “When Library Public McAllen them in Texas.

70 | southernfoodways.org Summer 2018 | 71 Oral History

career as a cookbook collaborator. In the Louisiana with Marcelle as a guide, they late 1960s, Sarah Brash, a researcher for knew the subject was worthy of its own Time-Life’s Foods of the World series called book. After Time-Life published Amer- the Picayune. She needed help researching ican Cooking: Creole and Acadian in 1971, Acadian foodways for a cookbook. Marcelle left journalism for Command- “I didn’t even know I lived in Cajun er’s Palace. She learned the intricacies Country,” Marcelle told me, laughing at of the restaurant industry, working in her twenty-five-year-old self. ‘That was the front of the house, keeping invento- before Paul Prudhomme said there was ry, and catering. In 1984, she began a such a thing as Cajun Country. And I told column, Cooking Creole, for the them I knew everything there was to Times-Picayune. know about it, and they could hire me, In the months since I traveled to Thi- and they did.” bodaux, nine other female food journal- Marcelle, a native of St. Martinville in ists have opened their homes and offices the Bayou Teche region, proved the to me. They have given me time, spare perfect choice. With a photographer, she batteries, cookbooks, and brownie traveled through New Orleans, eating mixes. They have cooked for me. And oysters at Acme and visiting Ella Brennan they have shared stories of their lives at Commander’s Palace. In Cajun country, and extraordinary careers. As a young she procured pigs for boucheries and woman documenting Southern food- crawfish for boils. When Marcelle joined ways, I am grateful for the paths they the project, the Time-Life editors carved, and for the opportunity to follow thought of Cajun and Creole food as a their leads. chapter in a larger book about Southern food. After seeing and tasting south Annemarie Anderson is SFA’s oral historian.

MARCELLE BIENVENU’S Gravy is a publication of the Southern JOHN T. EDGE, Editor-in-Chief Foodways Alliance, a donor supported [email protected] institute of the Center for the Study MARY BETH LASSETER, Publisher of Southern Culture at the University CAJUN CHRONICLES [email protected] of Mississippi. Field notes from Thibodaux SARA CAMP MILAM, Editor The SFA documents, studies, and [email protected] explores the diverse food cultures of BY ANNEMARIE ANDERSON the changing American South. We OSAYI ENDOLYN, Deputy Editor reframe dialogues about the region and [email protected] catalyze conversations about racism, DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS, Image Editor gender inequity, class discrimination, [email protected] began our women food and the orange spine of her 2008 book, and other challenges. We curate a Journalists oral history project by Cooking Up a Storm. beloved community that gains strength RICHIE SWANN, Designer interviewing Marcelle Bienvenu in After graduating from University of and voice at a well-set table. [email protected] I KATHERINE W. STEWART, her office at the John Folse Culinary Southwestern Louisiana in Lafayette in Your donation makes our work possible. Fact Checker Institute at Nicholls State University. As the 1960s, she reported on New Orleans Visit southernfoodways.org to make a we talked, I scanned her walls for awards features like swan boats at City Park for donation or become a member. MONIQUE LABORDE, Intern and her shelves for the brown spine of Dixie Roto, the Sunday magazine of the her 1992 book, Who’s Your Mama, Are Times-Picayune. Her career as a newspa- SFA MEMBERSHIP IS OPEN TO ALL. NOT A MEMBER?

You Catholic, and Can You Make a Roux? per journalist began there. So did her Annemarie Anderson Join us at southernfoodways.org • [email protected] • 662-915-3368

72 | southernfoodways.org Summer 2018 | 73 Character isn’t made by machine. #68

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