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From Civil Rights to Food Justice: Historiography, Food Power and Resistance

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From Civil Rights to Food Justice: Historiography, Food Power and Resistance FROM CIVIL RIGHTS TO FOOD JUSTICE: HISTORIOGRAPHY, FOOD POWER AND RESISTANCE A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Bobby Joe Smith II August 2018 © 2018 Bobby Joe Smith II FROM CIVIL RIGHTS TO FOOD JUSTICE: HISTORIOGRAPHY, FOOD POWER AND RESISTANCE Bobby Joe Smith II, Ph. D. Cornell University 2018 Throughout the American Civil Rights movement, food played a central role within the social and economic politics of Mississippi. For proponents of the movement, food became a critical tool of resistance in response to inequality. For opponents, food was used as a weapon of power to maintain white supremacy and undermine the entire movement. Yet narratives of food are largely absent from civil rights historiography, obscured by struggles for voting rights, integration, and education. Written as three papers, this dissertation shifts the way we understand the historical struggle for civil rights, the contemporary struggle for food justice and food sovereignty, and the politics of food. The first paper recovers the broader food story of the civil rights era in Mississippi and shows how power and politics obscured key elements of that story at the intersection of gender, class, time, and space. Drawing on a wide range of archival materials, civil rights scholarship, and interviews, I analyze responses to the 1962-1963 Greenwood Food Blockade and examine the work of activists such as Fannie Lou Hamer and L.C. Dorsey to ensure food security among poor blacks in the Delta through efforts such as farm cooperatives and food projects. The second paper situates the concept of food power—the use of food as a weapon or an element of power in the global context of politics and national security—at the center of post-1965 anti-civil rights activism in Mississippi. Led by US Representative Jamie Whitten, Senator John Stennis, and Senator James Eastland, the congressional white power structure ignited a campaign against War on Poverty efforts designed to alleviate poverty and hunger in Mississippi. Such antipoverty efforts, in the iii context of civil rights throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, threatened the politics of white supremacy. In the third paper, I juxtapose the historical case of Freedom Farms Cooperative in Mississippi and the contemporary case of Rocky Acres Community Farm in Central New York to demonstrate how these cases help us understand relations between historical and contemporary struggles for food justice as a strategy for building emancipatory forms of food power and sustainability. iv BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Bobby J. Smith II was born in Fort Hood, Texas in 1988 and raised in Fort Worth, TX. He graduated magna cum laude from Southwest High School in 2007 and summa cum laude from Prairie View A&M University in 2011with a Bachelor of Science degree in Agriculture, studying Agricultural Economics. In 2013, he earned a Master of Science degree in Agricultural and Applied Economics from the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University. In 2017, he was the named the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Research Scholar- in-Residence at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History in Jackson, MS, where he conducted archival research on relationship between the politics of food, race and activism in the Mississippi Civil Rights era. He was also the recipient of a 2017 Engaged Cornell graduate student grant for his research that examined how food justice activism rises in response to social, political and economic inequalities embedded in the American food system in both historical and contemporary contexts. In 2018, he was awarded the inaugural Study the South Research Fellowship at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi. The support of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture will enable Bobby to conduct post-doctoral archival research that sheds light on the relationship between food, power and opposition to the civil rights movement in Mississippi. Specifically, this work explores how food was a weapon of opposition and a tool of resistance in the Mississippi Delta during this era. It also focuses on amplifying the voices of contemporary activists in rural areas and their connections to food narratives in the civil rights movement. His research agenda is located at the intersection of sociology, African American studies, food studies, agriculture and history. v “Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.” - Ephesians 3:20 First, I give all glory to God for everything, without Him I am nothing. To my family, friends, and all those who have helped me up to this point in my life, this dissertation is respectfully dedicated. vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I started writing this section while I was on a plane headed to Raleigh, North Carolina in February 2017 to visit my family and celebrate the 100th birthday of my great-grandfather, William Oscar Blount, Sr., affectionately known as “My Daddy” to our family. While on the plane, thinking about my dissertation (of course) and reflecting on my life, I realized how blessed I was to be able to celebrate this occasion with my great-grandfather. Born over 100 years ago, near the tobacco fields of Pitt County in Eastern North Carolina, my great-grandfather farmed his entire life. During his birthday celebration, countless family members and family friends spoke about the importance of land, hard work, Black self-determination, the grace of God and family memories. As each person spoke, I was reminded, that the land has always been in my blood and that the struggle for food justice and food sovereignty in the United States is both scholarly and extremely personal. With that being said, I am extremely grateful for my family and forever indebted to them for their continuous love, prayers and support throughout this entire journey. To Bobby Sr., Cheryl, Sherry, Kyleigh, Josiah, and Ms. Teresa, thank you for believing in me, loving me, and always being my biggest fans. To my mother Cheryl, specifically, thank you for calling me almost every morning during my journey here at Cornell (even when I didn’t want to talk) to check on me, pray with me and remind me to keep and seek God first in all that I say or do (Matthew 6:33). All the love and support mean the world to me. To my additional family and friends, you all were a great source of support and encouragement, I thank you all for the prayers and I wish you all the best in your lives. To my “dream team,” formally known as my dissertation committee—Dr. Scott Peters, Dr. Lori Leonard, and Dr. Noliwe Rooks—I can’t even begin to express how grateful and thankful I am to have you all in my corner for the rest of my academic career and life. To Scott, thanks for vii agreeing to be my chair and supporting me during a critical time in my graduate school career (you already know the story, so I don’t have to tell it here). I also want to thank you for introducing me to Charles Payne’s I’ve Got the Light of Freedom over two years ago in your community organizing class. As you already know, that book introduced me to the beginning of a “food story” of the civil rights movement, which served as a foundation for my entire dissertation project. I also thank you for pushing me to think beyond Payne’s book and to make connections to issues today. To Lori, thanks for seeing something in me over three years ago when I took your qualitative methods course, introducing me to Michel-Rolph Trouillott’s Silencing the Past, and challenging me to think beyond my research ideas at the time. You have been a mentor and friend, and I thank you for the many conversations and allowing me to “drop-by” your office to talk. To Noliwe, thank you for believing in me and helping me think through my dissertation project and pushing me to write about “Mississippi’s war against the War on Poverty.” I am grateful that you saw something in those “two paragraphs” in an earlier draft of chapter two and trusting me to complete it. The support of you all made all the difference during this entire dissertation process. To my mentors who I met during my time as an undergraduate at Prairie View A&M University—Dr. Alfred Parks, Dr. Wash A. Jones, and Dr. Miron Billingsley—thank you for always being just one phone call away. You all consistently reminded me to “stay-the-course” and I am truly standing on your shoulders. To my pastor while attending Cornell, Pastor Wright and the Calvary Baptist Church, thank you for spiritually guiding me throughout the last seven years of my life and helping me to become a better believer and all-around person. The opportunity to be in ministry with you has been one of the highlights of my time here in Ithaca. To the Thursday night intercessory prayer group, especially Sis. Wendy, Sis. Martha, Sis. Janie, Sis. Lisa and Sis. JoAnn, thank you for praying with viii and for me almost every Thursday for the past four years. I truly believe it is because of prayer and hard work that I am able to finish this part of my life’s journey and “process.” To Carrell Johnson, thank you for being one of my closest friends in Ithaca. I never expected to have a friend like you and I thank you for helping me get through some tough times here—keep believing Romans 8: 28.
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