Bobby J Smith II: Rethinking Food, Rewriting Civil Rights (full title in description)

Transcript

okay welcome everyone we're going to get started okay hello everyone I'm Sydney Madsen a PhD candidate in the department of development studies and one of the core organizers of the critical development seminar series on behalf of Cornell Global development I want to welcome you to this talk organized by the critical development studies seminar series of The Graduate field of development studies the CDs seminar series aims to bring faculty members to campus who can enrich the academic experience of students and faculty of development studies and I can think of few Scholars who could better fulfill this purpose than today's speaker we are delighted and honored to welcome back to Cornell professor Bobby Smith who has traveled all the way from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to view this before introducing Professor Smith I would like to thank Tamar law the co-organizer of the CDs seminar series Jenny Goldstein Jenna love Mendola and Kelly Merchant for all of the work that they've done to make this event possible thank you and now it is my pleasure to introduce our speaker this afternoon Dr Bobby J Smith II is a sociologist and assistant professor in the department of African American studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign his research uses socio-historical and community-based approaches to analyze historical and contemporary struggles for food Justice and food sovereignty in Black communities in the United States he has been awarded fellowships from the American Council of learned societies National Endowment for the Humanities Center for the study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi special Collections and University archives at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the Medgar and Merle Evers Institute in partnership with the Mississippi Department of archives and History Dr Smith is born and raised in Texas and attended Prairie View a m University of Texas for his undergraduate studies he is an alumnus of the Department of jail development sociology here at Cornell having completed his PhD in 2018 with committee members Lori Leonard Scott Peters and Nollywood Rooks today Dr Smith will be discussing his forthcoming book food power Politics the food story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement which is currently under contract with the University of North Carolina press in his book Bobby grapples with the question how does our understanding of the American Civil Rights Movement shift if food is the starting point located at the intersection of multiple disciplines including critical food studies black studies history sociology agri-food studies and Southern studies food power politics recovers a food Focus that is often diluted or muted in the historical retellings of civil rights movement and the larger black Freedom struggle this food Focus uncovers a neglected stage of the movement that amplifies the overlooked and unacknowledged collaborative food efforts between black working-class sharecroppers who joined arms with local and National activists to get food on their tables in the Mississippi Delta region of State the state of Mississippi such efforts reveal how food was a weapon tool tactic and everyday preoccupation and power struggles over food during the food Justice and food sovereignty movements and it can help us theorize the past to inform contemporary social movements they also show us how food shapes the relationship between inadequate access to food structural inequalities and social movements in Black life and Beyond this relationship creates a conversation between the study of the civil rights movement and research on the Contemporary food Justice movement providing a space to rethink our ideas surrounding food while rewriting our understandings of one of the most celebrated social movements in American history the Civil Rights Movement please join me in welcoming Professor Bobby Smith thank you all for being here I'm excited to be back on campus uh first thank you to the organizing committee um tomorrow Jimmy and Sydney thank you for the gracious invitation to come back on campus to give a talk um also thank you to oh this is a full room thank you I didn't even look up to see everyone so first off thank you all for being here people from the University as well as from the community um during my time as a graduate student my life was located at the intersection of those two places so it is so great to see everyone here uh thank you for taking the time out on a Friday afternoon um I do recognize that I am the one standing in between you and the Thanksgiving break and fall break so I will not be before you very long at all I'll get right into the talk um so the title of my talk today is rethinking food rewriting civil rights food power and black life in the Mississippi Delta foreign perfect now we can move on so the first part of our talk sorry you know we're on Zoom so it is what it is um so my talk online will go as follows um um so I'll begin with a brief origin story of how I came to the Book Project food power Politics the food Story the Mississippi civil rights movement and then I'll give a more overview of the book and talk about how I'm thinking about civil rights and food and then I'll lay the context for understanding of my book my book is uh the geographic location where my book takes place is the Yazoo Mississippi Delta region of the state of Mississippi and then I'll talk a little bit about chapter one of my book which is um titled food denied food for Freedom the 1962 through 1963 Greenwood food blockade and I'll discuss that through three acts I'll talk about the beginning of the blockade the response to the black Aid and then I will talk about how the blockade ends and then I will end with some concluding remarks and then we'll move into questions and I'll facilitate the Q a so after my talk I'll say thank you and we'll move right into the Q a and we have people both online and also in person so I'll try to navigate both of these two spaces with the help of Jenna thank you so we'll move into the origin of the book so as I Was preparing for this talk thinking more about how I wanted to begin the talk I didn't know if I want to begin with the vignette talking about the book or if I just want to talk more about how it came to the story and I thought about um this book and this project because it was born right here in the department of now Department of global development then it was development sociology and I want to talk a little bit about how I came to this project while the formal research process for this book began after my a exams in the spring of 2017. I normally started this project in the spring of 2016 while taking a graduate seminar here in the department taught by Scott Peters it was Scott Peter's class um Community organizing and development where we began to learn about some organizing Traditions if anybody knows Scott Scott's class um was it's really built around narratives and stories so Scott wanted to talk more Scott winners to understand some of the organized Traditions that Community activists draw upon to address issues of inequality and also promote resistance so during the class Scott warned us to to begin to think about how our own research connected to what we were reading in the class in the seminar at the time I was a food Justice activist I was inaugural member of the Tompkins County food policy Council and I also organized with a group of people here in community in the community um creating the Ithaca chapter of the black lives matter movement here so I was very involved in in movement politics around here in Ithaca and the Congress County area and also I found myself interested in thinking about how do we bring food Justice into that conversation how do we create a space where activists and Scholars can begin to engage in conversation and we'll know Scott Scott really believes in scholar activism so Scott warned us every time we read a piece of literature in his class he wanted us to use our discussion as a as a point to connect what we're learning in class to organize Traditions to our own work around whatever we were doing at the time for me it was food justice so it was during this class that Scott Peters introduced me to a book entitled I've got the light of Freedom um the organized tradition and the Mississippi Freedom struggle by Charles Payne um if anybody Supreme if anybody is familiar with this book this is one of the most one of a groundbreaking award-winning book and a similar text when thinking about the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement Charles Payne makes the case that in order for us to understand the American Civil Rights Movement it must be understood from the bottom up many narratives tend to talk about the Civil Rights Movement through big figures such as Dr Martin Luther King Jr Rosa Parks but Charles Payne makes the case that we need to also examine the movement from the bottom up so when we think about the bottom of how do communities take the take this large national movement and translate it into their everyday local politics so Scott assigned this book to me because he wanted me to think about how can the civil rights movement or how can the organized tradition of the Civil Rights Movement speak to what I was seeing in the food Justice movement both here in Ithaca but also around the nation and even the world so as I'm reading Charles Payne's book because Scott wants you to read it and we have to give a discussion that he wants us to present about it so all that has happened um so I read the book in about a week because you know when I had a week so this book by the way is 400 pages so so I was reading chapter one and I'm so so much so my thoughts I was reading the book was how does the Civil Rights Movement speak to the food Justice movement today is there something about the movement I thought I knew the movement I I I understood a number of important uh events in the movement but I never thought about food so I'm reading the book and I'm looking for food so chapter one no food chapter two no food chapter three no food chapter four I'm like Scott I'm already at page 100 there's literally no food here I don't know how this is going to connect to food justice so I'm doing I'm keep reading so yeah I get to chapter five in around page 158. Charles Payne provides a 10-page narrative in a 400 page book about this food cut off so there's this moment where I'll talk more about it ranking to the chapter but there's this moment where food becomes more than just a background variable and a conversation about civil rights food takes the Forefront so I'm captivated by this event because it's happening in Greenwood Mississippi and I'm just I'm thinking more about work I'm thinking more about the movement I'm like this is a direct connection to put this on you hold on yeah so this is a direct connection to the food Justice movement I'm seeing where food comes into place and I'll talk more about it so this is the first time we learned about this idea of the Greenwood food blockade it's a moment where the white power structure uh manipulates of local food program as a way to starve black communities into compliance I'll talk more about what I mean by starting to compliance later on when I get into the chapter but this is the first time I learned about this idea of the Greenwood food blockade this moment where I never heard of food being important and I was really it kind of blew my mind because I thought I knew what the movement was about but food became important but again this was a 10-page narrative and then Charles Payne ends the story but doesn't comment on it it's as if Charles pan is mentioning it in passing to get back to a larger story about voting rights and education some of the common things we know about when we think about the American Civil Rights Movement so at the same time in the spring of 2016 I'm reading Charles Payne's piece and I'm learning more about Greenwood and learning more about the Delta and at the same time I was a TA for American studies 101 and Barry Maxwell was a teacher at the time and I shared with Barry that you know I'm thinking more about this food Justice work I'm thinking more about a dissertation um and I'm also thinking about doing it on Mississippi I recently found a found out about this Greenwood food issue and I really want to talk more about it in my dissertation I think there's something there again I was in the food Justice movement so I was thinking more about this in the Contemporary context but Charles Payne's book pushed me to think about it in historical context but our development arrests is so important by Cloud Woods is that cloud Woods provides a sweeping analysis of the plantation economy in the Mississippi Delta Region he argues that the plantation economy creates a system of power relations that promote white superiority and perpetuate black inferiority and he traces this from slavery through uh through at that time let's do the late 1990s but also what what what what cloud was pushed us to think about is how power becomes important in this conversation so while so while Charles Payne gave me a an event and a story to think about car would provide the necessary context to understand how can a white power structure have the power to actually wield over an entire group of people to withhold food from them and create this blockade so again so I'll bring these two books together development arrested changed my life uh if anybody hasn't read it I recommend anyone who's serious about thinking about plantation power and race and anything like that you should definitely read Cloud Woods's work what's also important about Cloud Woods work for a second because um Cloud Woods passed away about 10 years ago what's important about cloudwood's work is that he makes the case that in response to the white supremacy and the power structures in Mississippi black people created the blues so if anybody knows about the blues and music the blues is not only a musical genre the blues is also a social movement the blues is a way of life loses every day so I bring it up because again it provides me this larger context if anybody knows about Mississippi they know the blues and in particular the Delta like if you go to the Delta there are small places and jukeboxes folks who are here from the Delta know the blues is that region as a matter of fact the highway that runs from Memphis to Vicksburg Blues highway so Cloud Woods provides a context for understanding this larger story about Greenwood but then as as I'm thinking about Greenwood and I'm thinking about power and I'm wondering why I don't know this story I'm trying to figure out why after all these years that at least I thought I knew again I'm in the black lives matter movement I'm talking about civil rights I feel like I knew not everything but I knew enough about black history to know that food wasn't necessarily a big part like this so I was in conversation with my committee uh Lori Leonard came in here I'm trying to see where Laura is yes so I so I was talking to my committee and talking to Scott and the leeway Rooks and and then I was meeting with Laurie and I was like Lord you know there's this event I never heard of it before there's this event happening in Charles pass books the green with food blockade I want to learn more about it and I'm trying to figure out why I don't know it and and Lori says well you should be reading Michael Robert Trio's book silence in the past I've been exposed to the book uh prior in the spring of 2015 I believe when I took Lori's qualitative met this course but I hadn't read the book since then and Lori was like you need to go revisit Trio because Trio talks about how certain events are erased from the historical record for a number of reasons so I began to read all these three books together and he began to create this this larger this larger story about trying to recover a food story of the movement so as I started thinking more about Greenwood and I started reading more civil rights books I read John Denver's local people I read Claiborne Carson's in struggle I read all these important books about the Mississippi movement MD Crosby's work I can't read all the books and every single book mentioned this Greenwood food blockade every book mentioned this but when they mentioned it it was only again a very short narrative mentioned almost in passing to get us back to a lot of story about voting rights and education and for me I was at the Greenwood food like they teach me something about the use of food as a weapon against black communities theoretically the use of food as a weapon is also known as what we call Food power which gets me to the side of my book about food power politics and what that means is that so when I say the word food power um historians legal Scholars and political scientists use this term to describe how one nation Wills power over domination through food they would withhold access to food or the means to produce food or even the means to access food from another nation in times of global conflict and crisis well so when you use that as a way or theoretical framework to understand Greenwood we begin to have a lot of conversation about food which used as a weapon against black communities while this theoretical framework is important it fails to capture how communities then respond it's not that communities aren't acted upon and they are passive they're actually actually working against these power structures and these systems that have decided to manipulate access to food so I've seen this happening and I theorize is this response in particular in the conscious of Black's life black life this response is emancipatory food power so black communities are rethinking the idea of food power but not using food as a weapon to exert over people but in fact using food as a way to one navigate conflict in crisis but also the impact of it and also to promote a consistent way of accessing food so I call all of that to say I said all I have to say is that the interactions between emancipatory food power and full power itself I Define as food power politics so food fire politics is both the title of my book and also my theoretical intervention I argue that food power politics is defined as any set of interactions during times of conflict whether formal or informal between social actors that strategically use food in oppressive or imaginatory ways to mitigate the impact of the conflict so that's my theoretical framework that's how I'm coming into the book about what food politics means means so then we move into thinking about the American Civil Rights Movement when many of us think about the story this is a very familiar story many people know about so so Scholars have argued about when the movement began some people say it begins in the shadows of the Emancipation Proclamation some people argue it begins in 1909 when the nlacp is founded some people argue it's in the 1920s with uh um with uh The Cooperative movement some people argues the 1930s and the chance of the depression some people argued even starts in the post-war era thinking about post 1945 is 1970. so that's more so of where we locate this larger narrative around the American Civil Rights Movement many people are familiar with the brown V Board of Education decision of 1954. Emmett Till's murder in 1955 alongside Rosa Parks in the Montgomery Bus Boycott then also we move into the founding of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in 1960 with the lunch kind of city as many people know this story if a million narrative again in 1964 we think about Freedom Summer and the Civil Rights Act and then 1965 the voting right said again a very common story and about 65 is like the climax of The Movement they moved in 1968 with the assassination Dr Martin Luther King Jr where we begin to see a decline some people argue with decline involved with politics and then also some of us argue that this this new era Civil Rights Movement is what we call the black lives matter movement started as a hashtag in 2012 becoming a movement well starting at the hashtag in 2013 in response to the murder of Trayvon Martin in 2012 and the exoneration of George Zimmerman so something to say is that this is a very very familiar story and for me as I'm reading about the Greenwood food blockade I'm I'm learning more about food and I'm thinking more about this story I go to the archives um so I was awarded a fellowship that was mentioned earlier the major in merley Everest Medgar Evers uh one of the most important civil rights figures in Mississippi I was able to secure a fellowship to do research at the Mississippi Department of archives in history so I went to The Archives of History looking for a food story I knew this story I knew the Greenwood food blockade but I was wondering is there more there because again as I'm reading these books about the Civil Rights Movement all these events are important and the only event that comes up really is the Greenwood food blockade but again in passing so I'm trying to learn more so I'm writing down names of important people so I'm in the archives doing the newspaper analysis I'm coming through over 60 collections I'm thinking more and more about where's food where's food so as I'm doing this work I'm talking to archival staff so anyone who does archival research the staff and archives are literally almost Irreplaceable they know archives they don't of the archives but also the issues surrounding how the archives were produced and that's important to understand how these stories become larger narratives um so we can't see up there but it's so this narrative note is the political Story the prevailing Narrative of the movement this is rehearsed every single year whether it's at a museum whether it's a Black History Month programs everywhere so I'm in the archives I'm learning more about learning more about the game with food blockade and as I'm reading a newspaper about the Greenwich food blockade I learned more about other food issues so it's so each issue brings me to another issue around food so I'm trying to track food so if I'm doing more of this work what I find in the archives is that there exists at least four additional moments that are not a part of our civil rights historical terrain and one of those moments operate outside of the traditional timeline talk about what right there is but these four moments reshift how we think about civil rights history there are at least four moments that help us reconfigure rethink of our idea and I call this the food story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement I argue in my book that this food story is a quintessential understanding of food power politics if you want to understand how food was used as a weapon against black communities and how black communities responded this story is quintessential it is important you have to know the food story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement it begins with the well so I beginning with the Greenwood food blockade of 1962 which I'll talk more about just a second and then as I was doing research on the Greenwood food blockade I was reading newspaper articles and literally in one of the newspapers uh in the Greenwood Commonwealth right next to some stories about the game with foodbache I learned about this food stamp campaign by white Grocers so it so at the time in 1962 food stamps were still a pilot program so because of the pilot program our states didn't have it and what I found is that uh White groceries in the Mississippi Delta and around the state were interested in promoting food stamps they wanted food stamps but not to feed people they wanted food stamps to make profit in poor rural communities so I won't give any more from that that is actually in the book project and I'll stay there and I'll move on to the next event so so as I'm doing this work I'm in the archives talking to people and at the time there was research coming out Monica white was talking about Hammond's Freedom Farms Cooperative so we learned about family Hamer and then I learned about this other Cooperative that was founded as well called the Northern Boulevard County Farm cooperative and it was similar to family hammers freedom for ours but it was different in a number of ways one it was born out of a Delta Health Center so the Delta Health Center was one of the first rural health clinics and also it's born out there but also it's one of the first places where we see food is medicine becoming a conversation so it was different than what famous Henry was doing but again I'm in the archives and I'm learning more about these events I'm like wow this is interesting but anyway you fast forward 50 years later in the same area where the North Boulevard County Bronco operative was black youth today are continuing that story and they argue that they are a continuation explicitly straight their work as a continuation of the American Civil Rights Movement particularly the food story of the American Civil Rights Movement which for their in their case it is the Mississippi Delta so for the purpose of this talk I'll move into a conversation about the Greenwood food blockade I think that the Greenwood food blockade is one of the most important moments where we see food power politics playing out and it provides an entry into thinking about this larger food story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement okay so I don't know what's going on with the projection but so the Mississippi Delta is the Northwest Quadrant of the state and I'll move into the next slide and I'll talk more about that so if you look inside of Mississippi there is a Northwest Quadrant from Memphis Tennessee which is at the bottom of Tennessee to Vicksburg Mississippi it is a 200 mile uh so it's 200 miles from Vicksburg to Memphis and then it's 70 miles from the river to like Grenada County which is I-55 so if you look at the state of Mississippi with freeways and I wish again the map is not showing well with the projection which is fine you see this Northwest Quadrant it's about 18 counties all together there are core counties but about 18 all together what's so important about the the Mississippi Delta or we call the Yazoo Mississippi Delta we call it Yazoo because it is the Mississippi River and then it's the Yazoo river which comes out this way and they create this alluvial plane that created some of the most fertile soil in the nation in the world so if you know about the gas in Mississippi Delta it was a cotton capital of the world I mean this was a place where if you were going cotton there were stories about if you just throw a seed on the land cotton would come up just automatically I know where obviously that's a myth but they were saying it was just it was just that fertile so you have this huge agrarian place where this is where cotton becomes king and and yes it's really really important for that what's also important about it is that this is also the place where if we think about the Civil Rights Movement it was the birthplace of the White Citizens Council which was Mississippi's white supremacist organization which impacted which inspired an entire white supremacist movement across the South and even Across the Nation the White City Council was actually founded right outside of Greenwood Mississippi in 1954 in response to the brownview Board of Education decision what's also interesting about the Delta is that the slogan black power was actually stated in Greenwood Mississippi while black people were using the term black power well before such as Richard right in the 50s what we do know is that black power as a slogan was born in the Mississippi Delta which ignited a global movement throughout the 1960s and 70s around black power so the Delta is a very very important place in thinking about black life that makes Civil Rights Movement but when we think about the Delta we're not thinking about food so for my food story I I talk about all of those important details but I also want to get into the food context how did black people ACCESS food how do we get to a point where the white power structure was able to take away a fair take away a food program and start people or simply want to starve them into compliance so in order to understand the context for the book and also in particular the Greenwood food like hey we have to understand how black people ACCESS food one of the first ways they did was through truck patches so if so and also I say black people talk about black working class sharecroppers so whenever you go to a plantation um in the Mississippi Delta or even around the South you will see these Plantation shacks and usually you would see cotton all surrounding them and literally next to the plantation there would be a little small patch of land right here where they would grow things like sweet potatoes and raise chickens and kill Hogs and we call them Yardbird because they're running around the yards so you have so this is the place where they would have their own garden or small farm and there's a network of Gardens and Farms so each sharecropper had their own truck patch but the truck patch was never in their full control because they didn't own the land so during good crop years when the cotton price went up they were told to not plant any food and plant cotton all the way up to their doors this is reminiscent of when Booker T Washington found himself in Tuskegee for the first time in the late 1800s he went around out to all of these plantations that he saw literally cutting up to the doors of Plantation Shacks same story it's a different kind of a different part of History so but truck patches is one way to access food the second way was through Plantation commissaries many times we would think about commentaries we think about it in a place where they get access to grow access to grow crops and feed to feed animals and things like that but we have to rethink the idea of the commissary because it was also the place where white grocery stores had contracts to provide food to plantations that's also a part of my other chapter that I'm not discussing today but I hope you buy the book so that you can learn more about that particular story but the commentary was also one place they act as food but again they did not control when where and how they could access food the Third Way was the Federal Surplus Commodities food program so many people know this program government cheese government peanut butter I know that's I know people laughing you say that but this is actually a real thing government cheese and peanut butter and flour and canned meats and this was one of the ways that plantation owners were able to feed their labor but not feed their labor because this is not nutritious nutritious food it would have to give them calories to work enough to keep their labor alive and many times they use the federal service Commodities food program Whenever there wasn't any cotton in the ground so off seasons is when they really really use this program this program becomes important because at the time so this is again pre-food stamps this was the only way many poor black people particularly in the South and sharecroppers accessed food and even people as far as North Carolina my mother talks about government peanut butter and government cheese and macaroni and cheese because this was an important program again it was supplemental but for sharecroppers this was this basically shaped their entire diet but this program again all three ways of accessing food we begin to see that black people don't have any power in when where and how they ACCESS food so the federal service Commodities program when I put food in the businesses because it was a food program becomes important because as activists are making their way to Mississippi in the early 1960s Mississippi becomes what some people call Ground Zero for the Civil Rights Movement that's what people say at the Museum there in Jackson it's important because Mississippi becomes a Battleground in the 60s if you want to test democracy if you want to test how how racism works and see how racism works in the nation they were saying you need to go to Mississippi and in particular you need to go to the Yazoo Mississippi Delta because that is where we begin to see where how The Architects of white supremacy in the context of this plantation economy operated so it becomes the important part and also they control the federal Surplus Commodities food program so if activists are beginning to organize more the white power structure who controls this program is getting upset while it is a federal program it is administered locally so the federal government only has so much power in a local context I'll talk more about that later so what happens is activists begin to pay attention to this is that these programs are starting to disappear as we're starting to organize more and more a fatal Hammer observed in 1962 before the Greenwood food blockade that in Sunflower County Mississippi this program got taken away as activists were beginning to organize more and they started as a form of Retribution as a way to start people into compliance looking back on this in 1967 a 68 talking to the massive Wisconsin Progressive family Hammer says this where a couple of years ago white people were shooting at Negroes trying to register now they say go ahead and register then you'll start because they recognize that if you want to register and back then when you registered they would publish your name in the newspaper so all you had to do was take the name from the newspaper and connect it to the welfare roles because while this is the food program it's a relationship between the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Welfare Hew at the time so because of this they knew who was registering and family him and him said if your name was on that list and you on on the welfare rolls they would take your name off the welfare rolls so because you were willing to go against the you were willing to go against the power source at the time so so we began to see food is up so again the reason why I let this contest is because I wanted to understand that all the ways that black people in particular poor rural black people black working class sharecroppers in the South ACCESS food was never controlled by them and because of that it brings us to the Greenwich food blockade and why this is so important so I'm going to tell I'm going to walk through this chapter um and I'm happy to answer more questions at the end and talk more about this chapter so the Greenwood Food Bank begins on November 9th 1962.

so on the morning of November 9 1962 the leflore county which is where Greenwood is located County Board of Supervisors had a meeting this meeting was to discuss the federal Surplus Commodities food program in the county purpose of meeting was to talk about whether they want to have the program or not this was a normal conversation because a few months earlier in July they had decided to not do the program but also they decided not to do the program because it's July and also cotton is still in the ground you're actually getting ready to start growing you know you started that's a late planting season but it depends on the climate at the time so during the cotton season I said before they wouldn't have the federal circles Commodities program because you would need that food program because plantation owners had the means to feed their labor but when no cotton was in the ground there was no way to provide that without the kinds of means to do that so let's say is that this program you usually always sometimes went away during the summer and we'll come back in the winter time so this meeting is important because it's the local County Board supervisors are having a meeting and at this meeting on November 9th they have a meeting and literally the meeting is open to White sentences only so no black people are allowed to come to the meeting and that was published so what happens is they come to this meeting and they want to discuss do we want to have the program at the time Greenwood became the centerpiece of the Civil Rights Movement all folks were in Greenwood Bob Moses was in Greenwood Dr King was coming through Greenwood Greenwood was a a a crucial place and and the white power structure was upset because they were upset activists argued that they held this meeting and at this meeting they decided that they would not have the federal Surplus Commodities food program again open to White Citizens only and Samuel block who was the snickfield secretary in the Four County at the time was surprised because he was thinking that while it was open to White sisters only the program was largely beneficial to black people over 90 percent of participants were black and they couldn't understand well he understood what was happening there and activists argued that this is the moment where the Greenwood food blockade begins because also it's the winter time so this is November of 1962. card this up and you know that they're getting ready to make money from cotton and now we're going into one of the coldest winters ever in in terms of History Charles Payne argues that this was the coldest winter because nearly two to three people uh actually froze to death so it's a very very cold time people need food so what happens is activists begin to make sense of this and say you know actually while on the surface so if you read this article the Four County Board of Supervisors decides to get rid of the program because they say it's too costly it costs too much to get the federal government to come here it costs too much to transport food here we don't need the program nobody needs it apparently record but but also knowing how this program worked and how crucial it was to Black communities activists saw this as a way to try to undermine the movement so while people could say oh well you know actually it was just a decision based on you know a vote and they decided to do this but later on when it becomes a bigger deal because after this happens activists reframe this whole story by saying this is actually in retribution of what we're doing in Mississippi to be we cannot read this as budgetary concerns or we don't have enough money to do this work in fact they are doing this to undermine the very people we're trying to organize and if they had access to voting they would vote those people out so that we can have the right people in place to ensure that we have a food program so what's important about this is that the Greenwood food rocket blows up really quickly um I'll talk more about Cooper freedom in a second but it blows up to the point that Fred Ross the welfare commissioner in Mississippi at the time has to make a public statement he's saying I hear all these rumors about we've taken away a food program in Mississippi and black people are hungry all that is lies Dr King is lying Dick Gregory is lying all these people are not telling the truth and we are not starving people but he said but if you all don't stop doing this we could halt the program forever so he's showing that if you decide that you want to keep spreading these stories about racism and we're being racist we'll get rid of the program all together and then everyone will be starving so you begin to see these connections so on November 9th it's not as clear but as we look at the entire event itself you begin to see and this was a common theme with Fred Ross and other people in the state were saying if you all keep doing this we will get rid of the program all together support the pay attention to this because in response activists organize what was called the food for Freedom program while it started in December by February it created it took on a life of itself food for Freedom was a program in response to the Greenwood food blockade it was a translocal cross Geographic Food Network as far as New York City as far as Los Angeles people were flooding the Delta with food they were saying we still got to keep people fed because also we're so activists make the case made the case that we're organizing in Mississippi but we can't do anything because people are hungry people are coming to our meetings and they don't care about voting they need food to eat so this is basically disrupting our civil rights activism our movement our efforts which is what they argue that the white power structure wanted to happen so very briefly they suspended their voter registration efforts and ignited this large food for Freedom program that made its way all the way to Jet magazine and the first paragraph of the magazine article by Larry still reads after months of protesting and pleading thousands of negroes are being saved from starvation in the Mississippi Delta by the voluntary distribution of tons of food and supplies donated from all over the nation this was a massive program students from as far as Ann Arbor Michigan were driving down to bring food people from Atlanta were coming in and bringing food and it becomes even big because even in Chicago the Chicago friends of snake created the gift of freedom in Mississippi campaign Dick Gregory black community Gregory was one of the four uh foreigners of that event we could also received comedian Dick Gregory feeds carries food to Mississippi's needy then also Dr Martin Luther King Jr gets involved he preaches from his Pulpit he says we need to also bring food to the Mississippi this is a great example of what happens when black people don't have the right to vote because again if they have the right to vote they were both the right people into power and again that's that was their way of thinking so again this Freedom program is is very very important because it brings food to the Forefront of the movement but then also it does something also it does something even more important because it also begins is by Moses says to make a connection that wasn't there before the connection between food and political participation so this brings us into a food story if you will of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement again it's growing it's growing it's growing it's growing everything's happening and then also but even while the food was coming the white power structure was still attacking black people fatal Hammer his pictures right here was one of her daughters talking about the food for Freedom program what's this about the food for the program is that while it's called the Greenwood food blockade it actually impacted at least three counties in the region leflore County where Greenwood was um ruralville which is Sunflower County and then Bolivar County where I know Oklahoma County where Clarksdale is so if you look at the map I really wish the map would have worked earlier because I could have really laid this out uh but you know you have Google so just Google Earth it or just Google whatever you'll find it um but so so these Three Counties end up being a part of this larger food for Freedom Campaign and it's an important moment because while food is being brought into Mississippi more and more people are beginning to register to vote many people are saying now that you all can address all of our needs including our material needs we're not scared to vote because the vote was always attached to food because if I registered to vote they're going to take food away from me and my family so if I'm going to vote you have to ensure that I can at least eat and survive enough to fight another day so this is literally life or death so so it becomes this kind of conversation if Hoover Freedom opens the door to think about that so then in response to food for freedom so while activists are organizing food for freedom and while they're getting food from New York and Chicago and Ann Arbor Michigan and la and other places they're also working behind the scenes and petitioning the federal government to intervene this is a federal food program and if you all don't intervene we're not going to eat so while they're also giving food to people in the everyday they're working behind the scenes because they recognize this program is important and what we're doing is only a stop Gap well the federal food program is also a stop Gap it became the way in which people ACCESS food every year you can't part of everyday life so while us looking back at it is a stop Gap but it really was an important program that was supplemental but for many people it was all they had to eat so while they are giving out food with Uber Freedom voting rights uh voting rights activism is increasing people are registering to vote they're also petitioning the federal government to bring back this program Federal food program so Congressman digs out of Michigan is one of the forerunners and he's in Congress saying we need to intervene in Mississippi people are starving people are hungry and we got to get down there because Mississippi is denying food to people who need this food so what happens is once so because the snake and other people activists are are actually positioning the federal government the federal the federal government works with the United States Department of Agriculture to bring agents to Mississippi they come to Mississippi they interview the LaPorte County Board of Supervisors all this is happening and they're trying to figure out you know you all said that you're not starving them but Dr King is is in our ear Congressman Diggs is in our ear Dick Gregory is all over the place in fact Dick Gregory is one of the reasons why we're down here is because he's telling the nation that you all are withholding food from at least about 21 000 people was a number that they said so they come down and they interviewed the leflore County Board of Supervisors in about after about a three-day series three-day series of Me series of meetings over three days they decide to bring the program back so the Four County Board surprise like you know what okay we're bringing the program back if you don't want it let's just bring it back so we can get the federal government out of our way because we don't want so one thing about this is a side point one thing about thinking about this story in the south is that Federal intervention was never something that people wanted only time they wanted Federal intervention is that they could use the federal government to promote their own aims this is a moment where they say the federal government oversteps its boundaries and comes into our neighborhood and our community so what happens is they they they end up bringing the program back and then this article is this article is published the same day in the Greenwood Commonwealth right here it says pressure supervisors vote for Commodities this was a time to resist that's your walk one of the most important reporters in Greenwood at the time makes the case that this was not the time for the white power structure is characterized by the leflore County Board of supervisor to resist this was a moment where we could show the nation that the federal government would not overstep itself and we should have resisted this this is going to come back to get us we need to make sure that this never happens again but in order for us to move forward it made sense for you to vote for Commodities again but they were pressured to do it and this is what brings us to the end of the Greenwood food blockade as as with it as an event so this event becomes important for a number of reasons and what's in so and what I think is important about this particular event and thinking about food power politics is that it's clear that we begin to see how food was used as a weapon against black communities not to be sure many arguments could be made that this was his decision by the white power structure and activists took this animated life of itself but what this event does expose is that it expose what happens when people don't have full control over when where and how they ACCESS food it also exposes how those who are being in the actual Department those who are being oppressed can organize both within their region and beyond their region to meet their own needs which again informs us or makes us think more about what we call the food Justice and food sovereignty movements today recognize those who are things not the same thing one is about using food and agriculture as a way to address inequality and one is about reframing the entire power structure in and of itself so that people can decide when when how they get food but this this event when placed Within and the historical context of the Civil Rights Movement but then also the civil rights were in place in the food Justice movement's history begins to create this larger story about understanding a longer history of food Justice particularly in Black communities and I would argue that the Greenwood food blockade is is one of these moments where it shows activists that material needs matter that if we're also going to address issues of voter rights education we also have to think about materiality the green with food blockade also influenced the student not violence Coordinating Committee to have a conference that August right before the March on Washington or around the time as a March in Washington in August 1963 they had a conference on food and jobs so food began to gain some traction but after 1960 after the food and jobs conference food never becomes a central part of the student non-violent coordinating committee's agenda and what happens is while by 1964 with Freedom Summer and we get back into our story about the Civil Rights Movement food becomes again a background variable but for at least six months in the middle of one of the most important Civil Rights Movement food becomes important and if we take that one moment and bring it out and begin to trace events after it and take food and go beyond it we begin to see a larger story about a larger history about food justice but also a larger history about Black life so I'll conclude with what I'm attempting to do in the book and what I really want to show is that there exists a food history in Black life that has been often is said before muted or diluted altogether and because we don't know this story one we know a little bit about the American Civil Rights because it also makes us question what was the movement and while I'm not the first scholar to make these questions Scholars have argued that oh we should rethink the Civil Rights Movement from the top down so we should think about so it wasn't just about Dr King or anybody else there were local people but then when Charles pain writes about local people from the bottom up food is still not there so whether you tell the story from the top down or the bottom up or any any angle food is not there but when you bring food into the conversation it opens up a whole new world of us thinking about what does it mean to organize food and social movements it forces us to rethink the idea of food but then also we have to rewrite ideas of the civil rights movement in and of itself to be clear this is a small moment in a history of at least a thousand stories Across the Nation so I'm not making the case of this story it's just the the one story there are a number of food stories I'm hoping that my book can be a model for other Scholars to begin to think about what is the food story of the Alabama Civil Rights Movement what is the food store the civil rights movement in New York City because I'm convinced that food has always been important to black people into black life after the activists speak for a number of concerns number of reasons decided not to allow that to be the first part of their story I would argue that the reason why food doesn't come up in those narratives is because there's a number of reasons one reason is issues of gender when we think about the Civil Rights move when we think about black middle class men being leaders there's no space for women even to take on roles I say gender because food is so food is is gendered in that many times we think about women being at the Forefront of food work so one reason we don't know about is because the people who were doing it were mostly women and also people were doing it with all people organizing around food were also sharecroppers and again it's a class Dynamic there now because as those who are able to have the power to lay down a story to tell a story to lead movements of those that we pay attention to but when you re-configure your ideas and shift your gaze from these larger stories to these kind of smaller stories around who are micro stories if you will it opens up a larger way to understand what we're seeing today so my book attempts to do all of that but again use this idea of food power politics this interactions between food being used as a weapon against black communities and then black communities also the encounter weaponizing food but it's not the same kind of weapon food as weapon against black communities is about oppressing black communities and starving them into compliance when black people counter weaponize food their weapon is about promoting Liberation Freedom self-sufficiency self-determination and that's the purpose of where my book is I'm trying to do so thank you all for your time I appreciate it okay questions yes together I'm really curious background in 64 when it was picking up in Oakland by the Black Panther Party that he had been Central to some of the organizations that was happening there and so um but my question I'm going to tell you a question about scholar activism at the beginning right and Mickey Mouse that's not happening in Jackson Mississippi property operation Jackson so I think about could you talk about that child scholar activism and are you seeing Community folks also and as being Scholars and activists how do you draw that distinction who is the scholar activist and if you could talk a little bit about cooperation Jackson as well right um so I won't comment on Corporation Jackson um at the moment there's there's movement things going on so I won't comment on Harrison Jackson but I will talk about this idea of scholar activism um scholar activism to me so so I'll I'll tell it I don't want to be Scott Peters and tell the story so I'm going to try I'm gonna do this in a way that um that opens up an example so when I think about scholar activism I'm currently doing work with the national black food and Justice Alliance so while we were organizing with them they were thinking more about what is the role of a scholar someone who has a PHD or is trained in a number of methods and things has a skill set basically a pH level skill set or some training in graduate school on how do they contribute to a movement for food Justice and Black life in response to that they created this idea of blackademics which is the research arm of the black the national black food and Justice Alliance so for me that's why I see a scholar activism stuff dollars using what they're training as a way to contribute to a larger conversation about activism in Black communities now whether someone can be a scholar is is another conversation because it depends on how we just how we uh judge what a scholar is and what a scholar is not I do think that people are thinkers and I do think if Scott if Scholars are being trained to not only regurgitate something but also think and think and you know think Beyond where they are and think about life um in terms of in ways that promote a practice I think that could be seen as scholar activism but for me in my own way I see the work that I'm doing with the national black food and Justice Alliance and Scholar activism because my entry point literally is how does my scholarship contribute to the aims of that Alliance and their aim is to promote Freedom Liberation through food and black life so all of my writing all of my research all of my I come to this work and by being in the department of black studies African-American studies I can do that work quite easily in terms of inherently in our discipline of black studies we're all about social responsibility and academic Excellence so everything about our work is about contributing to the liberation of black people so all my work that I do I see the scholar activism and that's one example but the idea whether someone's a scholar or not requires a deeper conversation thank you David all right I really appreciate a story so my question is uh it kind of started her presentation talking about the top down bottom Dynamic through which the one through which yesterday is not told and uh so there so when I think about I wonder personally because comment a little more for those of us who aren't that familiar with that the way of how you're you're using those terms about that in the context of what they might give it interested in that is the end of talking about women and chair practice so I didn't hear when you're there you know for me that's like the bottom of the bottom up right and I didn't hear very much in the narrative that you told about the story of the sharecroppers or the women locally or in the community and what their role was because it's a lot about I heard a lot of names that I already knew sort of from civil rights and everything so I'm just kind of wondering like is that other kind of History recoverable or what kind of sources that you're there as another person's book it's a is it you know how is it important Robert thank you for your question so the first thing about top down bottom up so most people think about civil rights uh history and scholarship is most it's usually told through three three generations of scholarship the first generation coming out of the 1960s into the 1970s argued that the movement should be understood from the top down so let's understand that we need to study people like Dr Martin Luther King Jr we need to study people like Malcolm X we need to study the student non-violent Coordinating Committee of the NAACP we need to study um core we need to study all these different names so for them it was like for us to fully understand civil rights history we need to understand it from those who have actual records because these organizations kept records so they have actually a trail um but then there's a second generation that rises that says while this is important you're missing the everyday the local so we should really be looking at how local people like say New Hammer or different names from different regions how they conceptualize a civil rights movement but always it's always in connection to the larger national movement so this first generation from the top down has seen as National in the second generation is seen as um from the bottom up so think about how communities took on the civil rights movement in their neighborhoods then there's a third generation I think 1980s to today where people are arguing that instead of going from the top down or even the bottom up it should be interactive so we should be looking at both so we need to understand the top down and also the bottom up and put them in conversation with each other because it helps us to understand the larger movement so when I say things like top down bottom up that's what I mean by that in terms of this story about women in sharecroppers so in this particular story around the Greenwood food blockade I could have mentioned more about those who were doing the everyday work so those who were organized so I talked about people for freedom because I because I wanted to show how massive it was to make the case that food was a big a bigger issue and we must recognize that but those who were on the ground which I'm glad you asked this question were Everyday People folks like Vera piggy probably not even heard of Vera piki's neighbor piggy lived in coma County Stephen Clarksville Mississippi and she was one of the forerunners in the food Freedom program on the ground so while football Freedom was this National story or this National program people on the ground where poor sharecroppers pulled with black people but also everyday people were organizing on the ground together so in my book I do more of that work but I thank you for bringing that up because that's something I didn't mention in that part of the presentation but in the book project I do show how there are a number of unacknowledged people that we don't even know about that contributed to this larger story how you access that information um methodologically how do you know oh yeah yeah so so mythologically so so how I did this how I came to the story in particular about Vera piggy was reading histories of the civil rights movement and again I'm reading the histories but I'm not reading them just to be reading them for whatever Reasons I'm looking for food as I was saying before when I talked about Charles Payne's book I'm reading and I'm looking for food so methodologically my my thing is like where does food come up does it come up in confidence in my poverty does it come up as like do they say the word food so for me I'm reading all these histories and I'm learning more about food and when I read um uh Francois Hamlin out of brown universities her book Crossroads at Clarksdale she talked about Vera Piggy and she brings up this leflore County Greenwood food blockade and how Vera pagi turned her beauty shop into a space to um it's a storage space for this food so I do more of that work um in the book but methodologically for me it's literally looking for food in these different stories but then also once I look for food and I start beginning to put together a cast because again I'm telling a story then I started tracing the lives of each person that comes up and that's how I did that work methodologically thank you yes two deserts okay I have two supermarkets I can either walk 10 minutes to C-Town I'm gonna walk 40 minutes to Whole Foods I just wanted to know um so like in what ways can you see like the implications and consequences of what we call our e-powered applications so the question I'm going to repeat the questions for those who are on Zoom also just case they can hear it um the question was about uh food deserts and how does a history of a food story of civil rights movement speak to um food deserts in general um this issue food deserts so I think about this idea of food deserts I think about so one for me the language is more the I think what we're really getting at when we're thinking about issues of access to food deserts is this idea of food apartheid I mean people use this language now around food apartheid is that let's not see food deserts it's just something that just happens but when in fact there are policies and instructions that created this entire environment by which we navigate or your neighbor you navigate in but what they're really getting at is that this kind of system again undermines or strips black people or martial arts people stripped them of their power or their ability to control their ways in which accessing food what this shows us is that there is a longer history of because because ultimately what this issue of food deserts and people who are studying those in communities are trying to understand one how they came to be but then also how do black people navigate that by creating their own mechanisms by using food as a site for addressing a number of other issues and problems so for me I think what food the food deserts conversation can learn from the past is that it's not just about where Whole Foods is located and where you're and where where the bodega or the store the where the store is located it's about who decides where these stores go and why are they located here and why doesn't your neighborhood have that because then that puts us into a conversation about power and I keep saying power because I want to be very explicit because we many times we say the word power but we fail to situate what it means and for me power is context dependent situational so what it looks like in the Bronx or the South Bronx wherever you where you're living it might look different in Brooklyn it might look different on South side of Ithaca it might be different in Fort Worth Texas but what we're beginning to see is that the people who live in these communities don't have the ability to control their lives and control that across a number of of situations but particularly their food lives so I think with the food desert I think what my book can do in speaking to the food desert conversation is that we shouldn't be worried about where these places are located we should be actually worried about how these places how these places came to be and while they're in certain places which brings in urban planning which brings in local County boards which brings in your local government because people are making decisions so for example in Chicago this is a big conversation Chicago many people might know Chicago is one of the most segregated cities in the nation um and they're having many conversations about why Whole Foods is located in one place of the city and on the other place and people are saying it's not necessarily because of where they're located it's because the people who have the ability to decide where zoning happens and where um City Planning happens are able to work alongside these businesses to bring them into certain places again but that gets us away from looking at just the environment we need to also understand the system itself so I hope that kind of gets that answer your question thank you next question Rachel yes right um yeah so so yeah thank you Rachel yes so there is something deeper there in that what activists were recognizing is that in order for us to one build community and build trust we would have to address these needs because we're we're organizing people and we're asking them to put their lives on the line so before we can even do that we have to build trust and what they recognized was that we're coming into a community and we thought voting rights is all they needed education was all they needed and we soon found out that no they need more than just that so how do we begin to so what happens was that there's a moment where activists and Community people are engaging in conversation about what's important and what's not important at the time and even snake after the Greenwood football game and some of the records will stick people are talking about food is more important than politics so you all are worried about voting rights education and food is what people need which also creates this economic turn in the movement as well so you're right Rachel there's something deeper than just getting food to people it's about build interesting Community but it's also building trust across geographies so you have folks in New York City working with people in rural Mississippi building a network of food but also they have to trust each other in order for food to get from one place to another so you're absolutely correct and in the book project I get more into that Community aspect with chapter three of the book where we begin to see how Community becomes at the Forefront but food is always at the center it's a site by which all these things can be organized but then also all these to be organized around food so it begins with food and ends with food if that makes sense yeah thank you Rachel another question oh there he is thank you Jenny this is the Q a word oh sorry oh this is good luck uh okay my mom is there okay so there's no questions of course my mom is there sir thank you Mom we hear you thank you so much another question I thought someone was here um so so with the Greenwood food blockade um Bobby Levitt who writes about the Tennessee Civil Rights Movement makes the case that there was a similar issue around black farmers who were also using the federal food program in um in Tennessee so he argues in 1960 the same thing happened it's black farmers were trying to vote they under they took away this program and then they had to organize a food drive but it didn't make a big dent in the larger movement because because Tennessee has never seen as like this big site Mississippi becomes important because the history of the state and they're able to use Mississippi as a way to promote a larger national movement we also see a similar issue in Chicago in 1964 black folks on the South Side are also depending on this Federal food program and as they're beginning to organize around issues of of issues of any issues of inequality around housing and access to food a similar issue happens too where they're like look we need this program they took away the program and then they're all sorry so there's another concentrate happening Across the Nation at the time but Mississippi becomes important because it's it is a site where the Civil Rights Movement um takes up the most space and becomes a larger story an example but no there are other there are other issues around around this Federal food program being taken away from communities thank you yeah go ahead yeah I don't necessarily I I don't see black AIDS in this particular context I do think so I I'm glad that's this question because in in the conclusion of my book I talk about um what this means today in that there's a question about who represents you in certain spaces um and if those Representatives don't have your best interest in mind they can get rid of a program like that and you'll be hungry and doesn't even matter so I don't I don't see a blockade that way but I think the blockade don't teach us about how Foods uses a weapon but also it teaches us what happens when you don't have the ability to control your life or your food lives and we definitely see that today because I mean even next year next year makes 60 years since the food stamp uh Act was signed and there are a number of people in Congress right now concerned because people are getting ready to come for that program because when it's time to start making budgetary decisions the first things to go are usually Federal food programs and people are arguing that while food stamps is problematic for a number of reasons that we can talk about that another time it still feeds people certain people still need that in order to access important nutrients and foods and things like that but again but they can't control they they don't have the control to decide whether the Congress decides to get rid of the program or not and because of that that they want the power to decide all of those kinds of things because if Congress decides to take away millions of dollars from snap it's also it's not it's called Snap now supplemental nutritional assistance program snap now under USDA if they decide to get rid of that program or this had to decrease the funds people are not going to eat and they can't do anything about it unless but also there's a question about if they were able to vote the right people then then they could probably change that but that depends on what they get in office yeah thank you other questions oh yes baby so this is again like perfect but if you're interested in a sort of like write your senses of the local Legacy yeah the historical event yeah yeah there's other scholars in Mississippi uh any aspect with us it's like totally buried so it was it was buried in that so while I was doing my my research for this I became a part of the Mississippi Food insecurity project at Mississippi State University uh which is the language institution of Mississippi and they had never heard about the blockade they never heard of it they didn't even know about the history of it so when I joined the group my my task was to think more about how because majority of their research at Mississippi State is about how people on the ground today are creating local food systems creating csas farmers markets mobile produce markets things of that nature and they never saw they never made the connection to history and never had an example to make a connection to so when I so when I started doing this work I agree with food black and I published a public piece in the southern food ways Alliance at the University of Mississippi's the journal there they were like oh we want to get connected with you because we never thought about these historical contexts because all we see right now is we're thinking this is something new people are just now beginning to do this work you know people are just not interested in understanding local food but in fact there's a longer history of food in general than also some of these stories as well so when so when I joined some of the people in Mississippi around this issue they had never known anything about the Greenwood food like hey they hadn't even thought about the historical context they were operating in a purely contemporary context until about 2020 when they started doing work in Mound Bayou Mississippi which is in Bolivar County um they started making connections to the past to the crumb Quark that I talk about later but before they weren't thinking about the history they were just trying to figure out how people were mobilizing around Local Foods I'm in in Mississippi and in terms of my book I I do that work in chapter four where I discuss how rural black youth who calls themselves the north of Boulevard kind of good food Revolution are continuing the food story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement by addressing their own food needs while the food landscape looks different because back back in those days it was uh mostly rural so they weren't a lot of grocery stores there weren't a lot of places to access food outside of you know farms and land but today in these in these towns particularly like Cleveland Mississippi and these towns built on the ruins of the plantations are fast food restaurants tons of fast food restaurants and that is the way in which many people ACCESS food but many people also want to get access to locally produced professionals and vegetables so for me in my book I made the connection from the past the present but to answer your question about did people know people weren't thinking about this historically they knew about the movement and how important the movement was to the state but they never considered the food part of the movement as part of their own history so it's my hope with the book is that to begin to make those kind of connections because so many people are doing local food work in Mississippi and around the nation in the world and many people think they're the first people to do it when in fact they're not but they're part of a longer history of it and another example um Rafa is in the room as well as Jamila is here and in 2000 17 I got an Engaged Cornell Grant and one of the research questions was how can the how can the story of the Greenwood food blockade informed contemporary instance of food Justice in Ithaca um and I got to engage Cornell Grant and that was one of the first times we began to make our own connections to our own work in fact we all traveled to Mississippi in August of 2017 and we got a chance to archival research together and we traveled together then we went to the Delta went to Samuel Hammer's Farm we went to her house we did all that work and Rafa and Jamila were able to start making connections to their own work around food Justice they've been long food just activists in the community and they were able to see how their own work was in conversation with the Greenwood food bracket and other events like that so that's kind of how I see this playing out is that there's people don't know about it but once they hear about it they'll begin to make their own connections and I want people to use what's helpful for their own work because I wrote this book not only for academics but also for activists and communities it's uh Lori and then Rapha ready thank you yes I could do that so in chapter four of my book I again talk about rule black youth continue the story around food and for the past two years or so or three years I've been thinking about the next generation of black Farmers the next generation of black people who will engage in agriculture at a number of levels to be clear to be sure many people have been doing black youth work about agriculture for at least the last decade is a lot of literature growing but for me I noticed in activist spaces when we're organizing youth are not put at the center and in chapter 4 my book I I purposely wanted to end with thinking about how youth continue this story because my next project is recovering a history of black youth and agriculture in the South and I want to show how historically there's always been these mechanisms that have been able to promote Agriculture and farming as a way to develop communities and also sustain life that were geared towards black youth so of course the part this is 4-H historic the history of 4-H also in Black communities so my next project is geared towards thinking about youth because I'm really interested in this question of who will be the next generation of farmers many black farmers are over 60. so at some point if life expectancy is what it's going to be then within the next 20 years we're going to have no black Farmers now of course we've already declined for a number of reasons since 1920 you know we see the statistics all the time about black Farmers declining and black land declining but for me I want to get ahead of that and think about what does it mean to train the next generation of black youth who will do this kind of work around agriculture so my next project is recovering a history of that in the south in particular Texas so I'm from Texas so I wanted to do a book about Texas so I take this idea of black youth and Agriculture and Trace that history through Texas and based on currently my experience with current trends on uh participate participation of black farmers in food programs and communities on the receiving end of these security spaces if you go part-time team um and not only that I feel like this and learning from Mississippi and seeing these kind of things this was a prototype um and it was true and used again the same narrative you know I see the same story um but that aside um but I'm encouraged by you know something that is I think very important now is um supply chain right this brought attention to supply chains and ownership could you speak very briefly on you know what are some of the um what are some of the lessons that might be learned around controllable Supply chains and Logistics from one from space to another across Community yeah right so for black community up north and white means in the North to the South which was at the center of these guys yeah thank you Robert so questions are a supply chain like how okay I see yeah so I'm gonna go to this way so when thinking about um Greenwood in particular Logistics becomes important because they had tons and tons of food being brought to them and they had to organize it and distribute it through at least three different counties so there's questions of Transportation questions of Supply questions I was going to get there and what it shows us is that they were able to pretty much while it was called a food for Freedom program it was basically a local Food Network and local food in terms of in terms of local food but also not local food that we're thinking about it and today but also it's a food it's a food system and it should be read that way because people were trying to figure out when food was coming so we're planning around food they were also thinking about how to how do we get food to the hands of people and then once it gets there how do we ensure that we can keep this going and Vera piggy who I mentioned before who was a beautician in Clarksville Mississippi she's one of the leaders of it and she works with a number of other people across other places across Greenwood and also she works a family in Louisville as well so so yeah this network of people on the ground who are basically dispatched actually food and their system is seen as so that's how they get their supplier and they continue to think about how do we get this food and keep it coming but they also recognize that we don't we're going to need something different in order to keep a consistent reliable Supply because they were also at the mercy of food getting there and many times food was being delivered and wasn't getting to the hands of the right people and those are some of the details of the story itself but what it shows us is that people have the ability to create these kinds of systems and these Supply chains all they need are the resources and the connections and the trust it goes back to Rachel's question about trust they have to build trust with people in New York through a number of conversations and this is presumed so these people are not hopping on a zoom call to talk about how you're going to get food to from New York to you know Georgia or or emailing these people are making phone calls and writing letters and and depending on the U.S mail system to get their word out but they were able to move so quickly that it created again this this they flooded the area with food and they were able to at least for six months um address or mitigate the impact of the uh the Greenwood food blockade so yeah yeah so so what happens is when so when the Voting Rights Act is passed and Civil Rights Act is passed 164 Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act of 65 that's when the Black Cooperative movement takes takes uh begins to re-emerge because then they're like wait this green with food market happens and it exposed that if we don't control we work how we ACCESS food we're going to be in trouble so the Black cooperatives come on the scene to create a consistent reliable uh way to access food but also to control the means of production but also to think about production distribution consumption all of that but through the lens of black people being having the ability to decide and control which is remnant of what we call Black Powers the Carmichael Charles B Hamilton would argue that black power is the ability for black people to control their entire lives which also includes food I say also because many times we say control Lies We don't think about food but I want us to always think about food in the context of everything else going on life thank you one more question final question okay thank you