Chef Historian Michael Twitty

https://ideas.ted.com/a-chef-reclaims-his-southern-culinary-history/

“When that white chef buys his produce from an African American producer growing an African American heirloom and employing African American kids, taking them off the street, teaching them how to cook and eat and their history — that’s culinary injustices being reversed.”

Twitty’s ultimate aim: to teach the world, through food, that his people’s lives meant something. “We need to get over our fear of the plantation and slavery and the old South. It happened, and it was real,” he says. “And everybody who sets foot on American soil after those people lived and died, from their descendants to the slaveholders’ descendants, to those who were deputized to keep them in check, to those who were immigrants who came after them, are beneficiaries of their legacy, and a lot of that is through food,” he says. “What do you have left in the South? History, music, art and food. Who built those antebellum mansions? Who showed the South how to dance, how to play a fiddle with soul, how to make trumpets talk in African tongues? And who cooked the food that fed this whole enterprise? Black people.”

“These people were not the background. You visit some plantations, and they’ll tell you about the architecture and decor and never once mention the name of a single Black person that built the house, or farmed or cooked the food,” he continues. “We have to change this — we have to change our relationship to our history, change our relationship to the present and change our relationship to the future so that we can grow beyond this angst and this negative energy.” Declares Twitty, “I’m doing it by cooking. That’s all I want to do.”