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Following Emancipation and the War’s end, separated and disconnected families attempted to find each other, and the black newspapers of the time were filled with advertisements looking for long-lost kin. Mothers and fathers were united with sons and daughters; husbands located wives; sisters discovered brothers who had been sold away. Others found no one. All went on facing the new dawn, working their way to a new future in freedom. They all relied on the skills that they had demonstrated so creatively during the period of enslavement: dressmaking, barbering, agricultural pursuits, metalwork, carpentry, and more. Large numbers of them would create new lives out of their knowledge of and abilities in the world of food.

CHAPTER 7

WESTWARD HO!

Migrations, Innovations, and a Growing Culinary Divide

Dallas, Texas—

Everything seems bigger in Texas. Just driving along in a taxi on the road from the airport into town, I noticed the flags decorating the used-car dealerships appeared to be four times the size that they are elsewhere in the country. The weather is definitely twice as hot in June. Driving around the city with my new friend, a whippet-thin seventh-generation Texan, I was surprised at how Dallas seemed familiar. It fit into the pattern of many Southern cities that I knew. Shotgun houses huddled together, claiming their territory as if defying the troubled history of urban renewal that had also destroyed black neighborhoods, North and South. I could guess which of the old theaters had once housed thriving blues clubs.

I understood the class stratifications that were still evident in the proudly well-kept homes, differentiating between the substantial brick homes of the elite and the rickety clapboard ones of the less financially able. I could see the pentimento of a class divide that had always existed in the African American world but that became more firmly entrenched following Emancipation. There was a familiarity that came from living in a black neighborhood, albeit in the North, and from understanding that the migrations had transported blacks out of the South. We continued to drive, skirting the interstate that bisected the old ’hood like a snake eating away at its vitals. There was a stop at a barbecue place that, Texas style, included beef in its offerings and a trip to the black bookstore for black-related local books, and then it was time to move on. For I was in Dallas with a purpose: I’d been invited to speak at the African American Museum’s Juneteenth celebrations.

Juneteenth is a Texas state holiday that celebrates the state’s late acceptance of the Emancipation Proclamation. Black Texans observe their red-letter day with special fervor. At their inception, the Emancipation celebrations were times of reflection and featured prayer meetings and religious services giving thanks for deliverance from bondage. Gradually the heartfelt prayers of thanksgiving offered up by preachers in sonorous tones became secularized, and by the early twentieth century, Juneteenth was a time of cakewalks and parades with lots of high-stepping horses. Now celebrations are more likely to include beauty competitions and baseball games than the sermonizing of the past.

Throughout it all, though, the backbone of Juneteenth festivities has always been the table. In the early years, those who had toiled in sorrow’s kitchen commemorated their liberty with some serious eating. Picnics and barbecues were the hallmarks of the early celebrations, and groaning boards covered with bright cloths offered specialties like barbecued ribs and fried chicken and myriad variations on summer produce like black-eyed peas, peaches, and watermelon.

Dallas’s African American Museum is located on the state fairgrounds. There, despite a hazardous-air alert and temperatures of over ninety degrees, folks had come out to spend the day. Coolers were unpacked, lawn chairs pulled into convivial circles, and portable grills fired up. People gathered to listen