Free Cornbread Nation 2: The United States of Barbecue (Cornbread Nation: Best of Southern Food Writing) by Unknown Page A

a barbecue. Whites obviously did the organizing, but who did the cooking?
    In the heart of Dixie, evidence suggests that African Americans did the work. "It was said that the slaves could barbecue meats best, and when the
whites had barbecues, slaves always did the cooking," writes a former Virginia
slave in the Autobiography of Louis Hughes. But there are also Southern barbecue traditions, in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina and elsewhere, where whites were always in charge. So, what's the verdict?

    "Did blacks create Southern barbecue?" I ask Lolis Eric Elie, the black author of the widely acclaimed barbecue book, Smokestack Lightning, and a staff
writer for the New Orleans Times-Picayune.
    "You can't draw a straight line between black and white contributions to
Southern culture," Elie says philosophically. "But you can't ignore the fact that
the South is distinct from the North because of the presence of so many black
people. And many white Southerners are still afraid to acknowledge the
African influence that flows through their food, their music, their manner of
speech, and their attitude toward life."
    The origins may be hazy, there can be no doubt that barbecue became central to black identity in the South after the Civil War. Black barbecue stands on
the side of the road became the first barbecue restaurants in the Old South.
And because of the fame of black barbecue, "whites, in a strange reversal of
Jim Crow traditions, made stealthy excursions for take-out orders," according
to the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture.
    But a combination of forces conspired to take the barbecue business away
from its rural black roots. Urbanization, new sanitary regulations enacted
during the Progressive Era at the turn of the century, and strict segregation
laws gave white-owned barbecue businesses major advantages.
    At the symposium, we watched a documentary called Smokestack Lightning: A Day in the Life of Barbecue. In the video, Lolis Eric Elie asked the owner
of Charles Vergos's Rendezvous, perhaps the most famous barbecue joint in
Memphis, about the origins of the Southern barbecue tradition.
    "Brother, to be honest with you, it don't belong to the white folks, it belongs to the black folks," Vergos said. "It's their way of life; it was their way of
cooking. They created it. They put it together. They made it. And we took it,
and we made more money out of it than they did. I hate to say it, but that's a
true story."
    Racial controversy is part of the culture of Southern food, and the SFA has
never shied away from it. In fact, the association's 2004 symposium will be devoted entirely to racial influences in Southern cooking. After all, promoting
diversity and multicultural understanding is part of the association's charter.
    Which is why the S FA's "Taste of Texas Barbecue Trip" ran into problems in
the planning stage. The idea was to bring food writers, scholars, and barbecue lovers from across the country to the Lone Star State for a barbecue tour in
June of 2002. But S FA officials were dismayed to discover that all of the barbecue spots selected by a committee of Texans were white-owned.

    The SFA asked for a list with more diversity. The Texas barbecue experts insisted that the state's most emblematic barbecue was produced by Czech and
German meat markets. When officials insisted that any SFA program about
barbecue in the American South must be multiracial, one Texan accused the
SFA of "inserting a racial agenda" where one didn't belong. In a compromise,
a few black and Hispanic-owned barbecue joints were eventually added to the
tour.
    But the conflict put the widely held assertion that Texas barbecue is a white
tradition under the microscope. And considered in the larger context of racial
issues discussed at the Ole Miss symposium, the matter raises some troubling
questions. "The Bessinger controversy has given barbecue a starkly political
dimension," wrote Brent Staples in the New