Everybody ate cornbread that had a soul.
“Everybody ate cornbread that had soul…”
– Auto sales entrepreneur and high school administrator James Roberson (1943 - ) served as an educator and administrator for the Alabama Board of Education. He then became the first African American with a Pontiac car dealership. Roberson then became the owner of USA Auto and Budget Truck Rental Store in 2000 until his retirement in 2003.
October 1935. "Making cornbread with relief flour. Shenandoah National Park, Virginia." Medium format negative by Arthur Rothstein.
Growing up in Houston, TX meant that southern cuisine was a big part of my early childhood. My grandmother, Peggy Truley was the designated cook of the family, and she cooked everything from pork chops, to lamb, to greens, cabbage, various pies, and of course, cornbread. I would always hear about the varying sweetness levels of different people’s cornbread growing up, too. Some made it so sweet that it could be considered a dessert, while others made it so ‘plain’ that it could be eaten with other savory, main-course dishes. My grandmother’s cornbread sweetness threshold varied from time to time. If I was being really sweet, then granny made cornbread sweet enough to be considered another ‘secret’ dessert from what was really supposed to be the dessert. Other times, it tasted like flour and butter and nothing too, too special (Thought it all really was). Civic leader and minister, Bernice Albertine King (1963 - ), was the youngest daughter to the late civil rights leaders Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Coretta Scott King. King, a co-founder of Active Ministers Engaged in Nurturing (AMEN) and the Chair of the national advisory committee on National King Week College and University Student Conference on Kingian Nonviolence. She was also the author of a book titled 'Hard Questions, Heart Answers: Sermons and Speeches'. She, too, recalled there being ‘two’ different kinds of cornbread, and revealed that today’s cornbread is often sweeter than how it used to be:
“I remember going to University Homes nursery, which is located right next to the Clark Atlanta University campus [Atlanta University; Clark Atlanta University, Atlanta, Georgia]. And there's a housing project there, it was called University Homes [Atlanta, Georgia], and there was a nursery in the basement of one of the sections. We used to have these Mayday parades and I used to love to wear the little uniforms at these little--they were band like uniforms. But why, the reason I loved them you know when I was a kid, the little silky smooth stuff, kind of like this material, I used to love to rub it (laughter), as a little kid. And I seen some of the pictures from it recently, since my mother [Coretta Scott King] died I've found a lot of stuff. I remember going there and I remember not particularly liking the food, you know, the cornbread. That old--you know we like sweat cornbread today, a little sugar in it. That old kind of cornbread that had no taste and it wasn't--it was kind of not, hard-hard, but it wasn't soft…
Whether or not cornbread was made sweet or not-so-sweet, its aromatic capabilities left many black homes with a penetrating scent that would soon be something to remember when considering what smells of childhood were like. Civic leader and skier, Bonnie St. John (1964 - ), the first African American to medal at the Winter Paralympics, remembered distinctly smelling the aroma of cornbread:
“...She [her mother] would always get up at five in the morning and make cornbread 'cause she was going to make cornbread stuffing for the turkey. And so when we would get up, we would smell cornbread cooking. And she would bake the cornbread and take out the middle and turn it into stuffing. So there would always be the edges, the crust. And you would come and eat the crust, and put butter on it, and then, you know, that was the lead into the Thanksgiving feast, or the Christmas feast. She also loved making spaghetti sauce, and she would cook it for hours, you know, and so the smell of spaghetti sauce cooking. But she didn't cook much day to day. So is was more the holidays…”
However, there were some individuals who were not extremely fond of cornbread and have negative associations with it, its smell, and its relationship to their childhood. Orthopedic surgeon, chemical engineer, and astronaut, Dr. Robert Satcher, Jr. (1965 - ), who became the first orthopedic surgeon in space during NASA’s STS-129 mission, vividly remembers not liking many traditional foods when he was younger:
“You know, a lot of it was from the house. That's what I remember, because my mom [Marian Hanna Satcher] was a very good cook and we didn't believe that when we were kids, of course, because she'd be making stuff like collard greens and then, you know, and all these traditional southern things, catfish, collard greens, cornbread, you know, and the cornbread that's in the black pan kind of thing; chitterlings, 'cause my dad [Robert Satcher, Sr.] wanted that kind of stuff and you know, as a kid you're always like saying, "Yuck," you know, "I'm not eating that." And all these other people coming over and raving about how good it was. So, I remember how all that stuff smelled and some of my favorites growing up…But, I can remember, you know, just the house always smelling of food and we'd go out and play all day long and then we'd have to back at the mealtimes for dinner and for lunch, and always getting close to the house and having that smell coming from the house…”
Auto sales entrepreneur and high school administrator James Roberson (1943 - ), who served as an educator and administrator for the Alabama Board of Education and then became the first African American with a Pontiac car dealership, remembered growing up as a peculiar black child because he, too, was disinterested in this seemingly (southern) black cuisine treasure! His mother’s home consisted of many rules, one of them being that you had to finish what was on your plate, so cornbread, a dish he didn’t like, being on his plate didn’t help his case:
“...She was a type of mother who prepared a meal every day. And she had a lot of rules in the house. And one rule was, whatever was placed on your plate had to be consumed by you. And I had a lot of problems with that because being a black child, I didn't like cornbread, and cornbread was a staple of blacks. Everybody ate cornbread that had soul. So I would stuff my cornbread in my pockets or pass it off to my brother [Lawrence Roberson] to get rid of it. And sometimes she would catch us and sometimes she would not.”
In a particular circumstance, Civil Rights activist and lawyer, W. George Allen (1936 - 2019), who has run his own law practice for over forty years and organized lunch counter sit-ins and filed lawsuits for integration in Florida's Alachua and Broward counties During the Civil Rights Movement, specifically remembered the importance of cornbread and breading during World Warr II. As many food staples like (white) bread became scarce due to the war, his classmates would sometimes not believe him if he said that his parents had bread for him to take to school. Allen would therefore bring bread and cornbread to class, and it might’ve been close to a luxury item amongst his younger peers:
“And then we went out for recess, and then at that--when we first started school, we didn't have a lunchroom. So we would take lunch. And usually, we would take, you know, vegetables and cornbread and things like that. And during the war, during the First World War [sic. World War II, WWII], I guess I was in third, fourth, fifth grade [at Midway Elementary School, Sanford, Florida], we all would bring, sometimes we would bring biscuits and syrup and bacon to school for lunch.”
However, for some individuals, cornbread, amongst other southern food staples, was so magical that it had the power to heal people from sickness. According to lawyer and entrepreneur, Juanita Baranco (1949 - ), the former CEO of Baranco Automotive Group, one of the first African American-owned car dealerships in the Atlanta area, and the first African American woman to chair the Georgia Board of Regents, cornbread had a significant role in saving her brother from death:
“...I have had, two brothers, one is still living. My oldest brother Jerome Theodore Powell II [Jerome Powell II] passed away in 2003. He was Down syndrome and was obviously born Down syndrome and in those days it was very difficult, I'm told, and as you can just imagine, to have services. Nobody really knew what to do with a Down syndrome child and they really didn't know what to do with an African American Down syndrome child. I don't know what they did, I guess they found a way to institutionalize them or kill them or do something. But my brother was literally, J.T. we called him, was really literally dying, so out of desperation mother and daddy drove him to the country to visit with my grandmother and leave him there to die basically. And I think my brother Albert [Albert Powell] had been born and maybe even mother might have been pregnant with me at the time 'cause I think J.T.--well I wasn't born but my other brother Albert was born, and she had her hands full 'cause we were born literally a year apart. So she might have been pregnant with me and she just couldn't handle it so she took him back to the country basically to die. And my grandmother always tells the story, she said, ‘Well your mother came here with that boy and she had five boxes of medicine and she sat there and said, 'Mama, he needs to take this at one o'clock and this at.’ And you know how these old peop- my grandmother said, ‘I just sat there and I listened to everything Evelyn,’ and they called her sister, ‘everything sister gal said I listened to her, so then they left me with this boy, he wouldn't eat, he was dying, I tried to give him all these medicines and things Evelyn had left but I, I couldn't figure it out.’ And she said one day my grandfather [Albert Evans], one I call pop, and my grandmother I call Mama Lessie, she said, ‘We were sitting there, your pop and me were sitting there and the next–we had some greens and cornbread, next thing I know that boy reached over and grabbed that cornbread and reached for those greens.’ And so my granddaddy said, ‘Lessie, let that boy eat.’ So she said, ‘I let him eat, he was dying anyway I just let him eat.’ Well of course by the time mother got back not only had he eaten, but he was healthy and she had nourished him back to health with those—and my daddy always swore, ‘It was that pot liquor from those greens that made that boy live.’ Whatever, between cornbread and organic, what we would now call organic foods, you know, 'cause they didn't use pesticides or anything in those days, things in those days so between that pot liquor, the cornbread and the buttermilk, everything was I–was I promise you was organic. My daddy said that's what brought him back to life.”
It is very clear that cornbread is cemented into the childhood memories of many African American households. Some recall it to be a simple black southern staple, while others alluded to it having metaphysical, restorative capabilities.
Student Ambassador Update:
This week, my Black History Month Contest formally closed! I was only able to get one student to completely submit their work, so I am honestly not sure where to go from here. I’m trying to regard it as a learning experience and not be too disappointed in myself because I completed substantial outreach on campus. However, my efforts, successes, and failures are necessary, as they might help future student ambassadors.
I was also able to do some tabling with the advertisement material that was sent to me in our student center in collaboration with The Moorland-Spingarn Research Center. I gave out pamphlets, brochures, and tote bags and was able to inform more students about the access they have to the digital archive!
