This week we focused on the Second Great Migration, a time from the 1940s through 1970s when millions of African Americans left the South and moved to urban areas in the Northeast, Midwest, and West, including to the San Francisco Bay Area. From African people braiding seeds into their hair before being forced to board ships to growing their own food as an act of sovereignty in Colonial America and reserving the nutritious pot likker from greens they served to White slaveowners for their own children, food has represented resistance, rebellion, and revolution for Black people in America for hundreds of years.
When we eat collard greens in their juices, we honor the ingenuity of African-American cooks who took recipes from home and created a truly American cuisine with the mix of transplanted and native ingredients they found in a new land.
Normally when we teach this lesson at school, we don’t have enough time or the proper equipment to bake, but our distance learning kit model this semester allowed us to send home a slice of homemade cornbread to each third grader to help mop up that delicious pot likker during class! In breakout rooms on our Zoom, they shared what foods they would bring if they had to go to a faraway place. A sample of their responses: mac and cheese, wontons, mango, dragonfruit, and strawberry shortcake. Ms. Grace shared that instead of ready-to-eat food, she would bring a cow and wheat so she could survive for longer. We hope that our program can play a small part in all of our students growing up to be more self sufficient, food literate, and nourished.
