KAYTE YOUNG: From WFIU, I'm Kayte Young, and this is Earth Eats. 

PRISCILLA MCCUTCHEON: So, it was about feeding people. Often when you think about farming cooperatives, we think about a very particular type of food. But at the very basic level of what she was trying to do, is that she was trying to feed people. 

KAYTE YOUNG: On this last week of Black History Month, we take a look back at an interview from 2018 with Dr. Priscilla McCutcheon, about her research on civil right activist Fannie Lou Hamer. Alex Chambers talks with Dr. McCutcheon about Hamer's Freedom Farm Cooperative in rural Mississippi, and what today’s food movement might learn from Hamer's work. And we speak with Chef Freddie Bitsoie of the Mitsitam Cafe in the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington D.C. He shares recipes and talks about native cuisines. That's all just ahead, on Earth Eats. 

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Our guest today is Dr. Priscilla McCutcheon. She spoke with us during a visit to the IU campus in February of 2018. Producer Alex Chambers talks with Dr. McCutcheon about her research on activist Fannie Lou Hamer, and the relevance of her work for today's food movement. 

ALEX CHAMBERS: I'm talking today with Priscilla McCutcheon, assistant professor of Pan-African studies and geography geosciences at the University of Louisville. Her research is about African American farmers and food communities in the U.S. south.  She's published articles on Muhammad Farms - a 1500-acre farm in Georgia, owned and run by the nation of Islam, and a program at a black protestant church in Atlanta that provides what she calls emergency soul food. 

Her current research is about the great civil rights activists Fannie Lou Hamer and the Freedom Farm Cooperative she started in 1969, in Sunflower County Mississippi. 

[To Dr. Priscilla McCutcheon] Thanks again, for being here. 

PRISCILLA MCCUTCHEON: [To Alex] Of course, thank you for having me. 

KAYTE YOUNG: [Narrating] First a little background on Fannie Lou Hamer. She's known for her voting rights activism in the south in the 1960's. She led the Mississippi Democratic Freedom Party, which was dedicated to gaining the right to vote for African Americans. Hamer leads the party to the 1964 Democratic National Convention in New Jersey, with the goal of integrating the all-white democratic party. 

PRISCILLA MCCUTCHEON: There were a lot of conversations about how this should be done, but Fannie Lou Hamer, being the person that she was, she decided to really take matters into her own hands, and she took the floor. 

KAYTE YOUNG: [Narrating] The live television feed cut away at that point. But the cameras kept rolling and her entire speech was recorded. 

PRISCILLA MCCUTCHEON: And so what Fannie Lou Hamer's really known for is the words "I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired." And she's talking the conditions of African Americans in Mississippi, and that the world, and really the country is not paying any attention to. And so that kind of catapulted her into the national scene, but she was already doing a lot of work really in the rural south and across the nation

KAYTE YOUNG: [Narrating] Some of the conditions that Hamer was witnessing around her and experiencing herself were malnutrition and hunger. Hamer herself suffered from diseases associated with poor nutrition such as diabetes and hypertension. And she lacked access to healthcare in her community due to segregation. Hamer's response to these conditions was to organize and to act. 

PRISCILLA MCCUTCHEON: She attempted herself along with other activists to go and gain the right to vote. And there were a few instances where not only was there pushback, but there was an instance where her bus was stopped from returning from going to vote. They were arrested until she and other activists were arrested, she was taken to jail, she was beaten in jail, she was sexually assaulted in jail, and so all of that stuff kind of influenced her to really keep pushing, none of it stopped her. If anything, it just made her push harder for that purpose. She saw voting, I think, as really central to livelihood and so when you think about things like access to land, that couldn't really happen without African Americans have this sustained right to vote. 

KAYTE YOUNG: That's Priscilla McCutcheon talking to Alex Chambers about Fanny Lou Hamer. In just a moment we'll return to our conversation and learn about Hamer's efforts to put African Americans in charge of their own food security. 

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PRODUCTION SUPPORT

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If you're just joining us, our guest today is Dr. P Mc? She's been talking with Alex Chambers about the work of Fanny Lou Hamer. In addition to her voting rights activism which she's well known for, Hamer also started the freedom farm cooperative. Dr. Mc? current research focuses specifically on this aspect of Hamer's work. 

Alex asked her to explain. 

PRISCILLA MCCUTCHEON: So, it was about beating people. Often when we think about a farming cooperative, especially in the sustainable AG movement, we think about a very particular type of food. But at the very basic level of what she was trying to do is she was trying to feed people, because she saw hungry people and malnourished people, directly around her and she was one of those people herself. 

And so, she also saw that land being in some ways a way to build economic development around black people as a hole in that area. And so, she had subsistence agriculture as a part of that land. She gave people insight into how to apply for agricultural loans, so it’s kind of this multi layered projects, where feeding people was a part of it, but I think really at the basis of it was economic development among black people as a whole. 

So, it consisted of land for agriculture and so typical things like ocrum, melons, any type of food that people would need for those purposes. It also had a pig-bank. And so, the pig bank became a way to produce other pigs for slaughter and these pigs would really last families if they were processed and stored correctly for a year. And so, the pig bank to me was one of the more interesting parts of it because we don't think about how long really one pig could last if it's stored and processed correctly. 

ALEX CHAMBERS: Yeah, I think the pig bank is really interesting too. 

PRISCILLA MCCUTCHEON: Yeah, me too. 

ALEX CHAMBERS: (laughs) I don't think it’s something really think about very much. 

PRISCILLA MCCUTCHEON: Yeah. 

ALEX CHAMBERS: But I guess it was important and sort of this really interesting innovation because it was way that families could feed themselves cheaply. And since pigs are pretty omnivorous its relatively cheap to feed them. And...

PRISCILLA MCCUTCHEON: Exactly, yeah. 

ALEX CHAMBERS: So, that's really interesting. That's very cool. So, the Freedom Farm itself, had she invited families, or families would find out about this and then they would get a house? 

PRISCILLA MCCUTCHEON: Yeah, and so in some places they got a house, everyone who benefited from the agriculture did not live on the land. But in many cases, they were able to have their own house or and in some cases first house on this land.

People applied, everyone knew, especially in that area who Fanny Lou Hamer was. And so, people applied to live on the land, and most people were pretty excited about the program. 

ALEX CHAMBERS: People didn't have to necessarily pay to live there? 

PRISCILLA MCCUTCHEON: No, she knew that the families that she aimed to work with, did not have the capital, and were not able to afford to pay to live there. And so, in some cases families did pay small amounts, but in most cases, there was no buy-in in terms of capital to live there. But they still provided labor. So, the people living on the farms were the people that were living on the land. It was local food and really the truest sense. But it wasn't often that fancy sustainable AG food that we think about. 

ALEX CHAMBERS: So, you're doing this research on Fanny Lou Hamer, and she's very... I think it's very exciting to sort of be reminded of especially the ways that she was involved with land and farming and food politics. Not just voting rights. I found this quote, this thing she once said that food, quote, "allows the sick one a chance for healing, the silent ones a chance to speak, the unlearned ones a chance to learn, and the dying ones a chance to live." 

PRISCILLA MCCUTCHEON: That says it all. 

ALEX CHAMBERS: Right. 

PRISCILLA MCCUTCHEON: Yeah. 

ALEX CHAMBERS: So, I'm thinking about why is... and this is in regard to her work at the time, but also sort of ongoing. Why is access to food important beyond sort of what we think of as sort of like just health, and not being hungry? Why is it important sort of in a bigger political sense? 

PRISCILLA MCCUTCHEON: Well I think that some of it is about having power and so the power to be able to control what's going in your body and control your livelihood. I think without food like there's so many different things, and so kind of going back to that quote you're just not able to do, or do to the best of your ability, and so thinking about school children, who go into school hungry, they're not able to learn in a way that they should in part because they just... they're hungry at the same time, and so I mean I think with just on a daily basis there are things that having access to food does, but I think maybe on a broader sociopolitical basis that you're talking about, access to land, access to land for the purpose of growing food, in some ways equals power and really self-determination so maybe that's a better word to use. That you're controlling your livelihood and also the livelihood of your family in a way that maybe you haven't. You haven't had access to. 

If you think about, something in about like a 1969 text called Let Them Eat Promises. And so, it's one of the, it was one of my first introductions into hunger literature. And so, it's about Marian Wright, Marian Wright Edelman, and Robert Kennedy, she takes Robert Kennedy down to Mississippi Delta to show him some of the conditions. And so, at that time one of the things that comes from the book is that it almost seems as though people are really systematically being denied food for the purpose of or really for the purpose of oppression. And so, when I think when you think about food denial, it's not really on an individual basis, but what does it do to a community of people when you don't have access to really safe and healthy food? And so, the question of safety, that seems I guess, kind of odd, when you're talking about food, but really controlling your own food sources I think is important. And really Hammer saw it as important. 

ALEX CHAMBERS: And do you see that, how does that continue to play out, today? 

PRISCILLA MCCUTCHEON: I mean when you think about communities, and so not just urban communities of color, but rural communities of color, what types of grocery stores in these communities, what types of fast food restaurants are in these communities, and communities really just wanting healthy food, and not having access it to it. And so, having entire urban communities without grocery stores, and having really even, and it goes really across geographic boundaries, but urban and rural communities that in some cases when they do have grocery stores, they're not having produce that anyone would want to buy. And so, I think when you think about, like how it plays out today, like you think urban agriculture is a big part of it, and so having land to grow food on. Rural agriculture is a big part of it, but people should also be able to walk into the grocery store and get something that's healthy and affordable, like a lot of us can do in the neighborhoods that we live in. Like you don't have that type of access now. 

KAYTE YOUNG: At this point Alex asked Dr. McCutcheon what she would like to say to the food movement today. 

PRISCILLA MCCUTCHEON: I mean there's a lot that I would want to say to the food movement. I think that at its very basis to push for safe, healthy and local food is something that we all should be striving for. And so, I think in general the food movement is trying to go in the right direction. But I think just focusing on food without focusing on structural inequalities that influence why people eat certain foods, and like what types of foods are located in certain neighborhoods, I think that doesn't work. And so, if you're just addressing healthy food, but you're not addressing like segregation and housing or poverty and housing or not having well-funded schools, I don't think you can address schools really in an isolated manner if that makes sense. And so, I think this idea of safe and healthy food, there's some people possibly outside the food movement who look at it as a problem that's maybe secondary to problems that as more central to certain neighborhoods. And so, I think for the food movement if they maybe look at that problem as a part of these large structural issues, there might be more buy-in. And there's also a level of people maybe knowing it all?  In the food movement about what people should eat, and how people should eat, that can be a little... that can turn people off a little. 

ALEX CHAMBERS: So, can you, I mean I feel like part of this is like, racism. 

PRISCILLA MCCUTCHEON: Yeah. 

ALEX CHAMBERS: Would you say? 

PRISCILLA MCCUTCHEON: Yeah, definitely. 

ALEX CHAMBERS: I mean certainly class is an issue as well. PRISCILLA MCCUTCHEON: Yeah but the intersection of racism and classism but...

ALEX CHAMBERS: How does that play out? Can you give an example? 

PRISCILLA MCCUTCHEON: So maybe not even thinking about food that's culturally appropriate to certain groups, and so I've been in certain spaces in the food movement without naming them, where there'll be this outright assault on things like pork. And so, this idea that pork is bad for your health, no one should eat it. And even that approach, like nutritionally is not totally nuanced. But in some cases, you're telling cultures of people that everything they're doing is bad and we know the right way to do it. And that's not always the case. And so, I think that's, that's one of the ways that I see it. That I see it play out. 

Also, this push for getting everyone back to the land, and so one of the things that I always try to do in my talks is make a caveat that everyone doesn't want to farm. And they shouldn’t' have to. And so like, you should be able to go into stores and get food that's healthy, you shouldn't have to go out on the land and farm. It's something I like to do but everyone doesn’t like to, and urban agriculture is not going to solve the problems of the world in my opinion. But it seems like some people in the food movement maybe think that. 

KAYTE YOUNG: I jumped in to ask Dr. McCutcheon about specialty health food stores, and how those spaces might not feel familiar or comfortable to everyone. What if we could just have a high-quality healthy food available at the regular grocery store? 

PRISCILLA MCCUTCHEON: So, a lot of these specialty stores, which are stores that you know I go to if I get the chance to, but they're very (sighs) white spaces, and they can sometimes be unwelcoming. And so even if you know your way around these spaces you still feel as though it's just this kind of weird feeling of not belonging when you walk into these spaces. And so, I would agree with you that having healthy produce at just a regular store, and so a Kroger, and in some communities even you know a corner store is necessary. And not just at specialty stores. 

And so not only can they be exclusive based on race, but they're also not inclusive based on income. And so, a lot of people just can't afford to do their daily shopping at a lot of these stores. 

ALEX CHAMBERS: What can the food movement learn from this history, that you're working on about Fanny Lou Hamer? 

PRISCILLA MCCUTCHEON: I think a part of it is that there are African Americans, and in particular African American women that bring some level of expertise to the food movement, in terms of local agriculture and also cooperative farming movements. And so, this idea that African Americans sometimes we limit their experiences to slavery and sharecropping and don't understand that even within those experiences there's a level of expertise that they had to have to make this actually... for farms to actually function. And so, I think that that's one thing that we can learn from these historic farming developments, that African Americans have always done this work, and so we're not in the food movement introduction African Americans to really... much for a lack of better words. That there's a culture history of this work, that's already... that's always been done. And you can see that in some cases, so when you look at urban agriculture in places like Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta, a lot of people, African Americans are pointing to rural roots of this agriculture and so always being done in their families and really them passing it on for generations. 

It's a different way to maybe think about cooperatives. And so how do we create buy-in maybe for communities or for individuals who may not have the capital to buy in but maybe have other resources that they can contribute and also and sustain food movements based off of these resources. 

I think something else if you think about Hamer's movement, she wasn't just growing food that voting rights, grants, scholarships, became a large part of it. And so, when you think about these isolated examples of food movements where people are just growing food, which is incredibly important, but again how do we think about other issues that come alongside it? And she was in many ways trying to solve larger structural issues and food became... she understood that feeding people was an important part of that. 

ALEX CHAMBERS: Yeah it was part of a bigger thing about people having access to all kinds of different resources. 

PRISCILLA MCCUTCHEON: Yeah, exactly. 

ALEX CHAMBERS: And so, putting those in the same place was really important. 

PRISCILLA MCCUTCHEON: No one has the time to figure out how that's, to get to all these different resources and she's doing it literally in one geographic space. 

ALEX CHAMBERS: Yeah, I think that's a really great and fascinating and essential and powerful things. 

PRISCILLA MCCUTCHEON: yeah, me too, she's a great woman, or was a great woman. 

(Sweet Honey in the Rock, sings about fanny Lou Hamer) 

KAYTE YOUNG: That was Dr. Priscilla McCutcheon of the University of Louisville. We have links on our website to a recording of the speech Hamer delivered at the Democratic National Convention in 1964. 

(Choir: We're sick and tired of being sick and tired, that's what the lady yell)

KAYTE YOUNG: Plus, more information about Hamer's Freedom Farm cooperative. Find that and more at EathEats.org. 

(Trying to vote, she was thrown in jail, Fanny Lou Hamer x1,2)

Though native American food is the oldest cuisine on the continent

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It's only started showing up in glossy food magazines and high-end restaurant scene in recent years. Chefs like Shawn Sherman of the sous chef approach native cuisine through foraging traditional ingredients and bringing back the foods his Lagorta ancestors may have eaten. Chef Ben Jacobs is a tribal member of the O Sage nation and the founder of Tacobe, their place is fast casual native American food with two locations in Denver. 

There is not one native cuisine. As the executive chef in the national museum of the American Indian in Washington D.C., my guest Freddie Bitsoie, gets that. 

FREDD BITSOIE: Fundamentally what my driving force in my career is all about is to make a pathway for native cuisine. 

KAYTE YOUNG: The museum's cafe is called Mitsutam which means "Let’s Eat" in the native language of the Delawarean and Piscataway peoples. The menu is crafted to enhance the museum experience by exposing guests to some of the indigenous cuisines of the Americas. And to offer a chance to explore the history of native foods. But there are so many traditions. 

FREDDIE BITSOIE: Being the chef at museum for the native American cultures throughout the northern hemisphere, it kind of puts a lot on as far as the explanation, the execution, and the presentation of the foods, because there is that responsibility of trying to present things that are indigenous to different regions of the country and still having to have a solid story, and knowledge of where these dishes came from. 

KAYTE YOUNG: If you are native American but have attended a Powwow, you might be thinking about fry bread. It's a tasty deep-fried dough made with white flour, often served topped with stewed meat or beans. Though it holds a solid place in many native food traditions today, fry bread has its origins in the mid 1800's when native peoples were forced to rely on government rations of white wheat flour, salt, and water. Frybread is not a traditional food to the people native to north America. It's more of a culinary adaptive response to oppression. But that doesn't mean it doesn't have a place in contemporary native cuisine. Chef Freddie Bitsoie didn't prepare fry bread during his recent visit to Indiana University. But he doesn't shy away from it either. He says he'll address the topic in his forthcoming book. 

I asked him if he noticed a lot of fusions happening native cuisines. 

FREDDIE BITSOIE: Oh yeah for sure. So, when we look at how the food is made, there has to be a way where, like for example, French cooking. Cause I went to culinary school and I was formally trained as a French chef. So sometimes what I do when I cook native food is, I cook it with the French technique. So inadvertently that's a fusion in itself. there are some chefs out there that are creating native dishes and native sauces based on French ideas. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's just a matter of how you name it, label it, and say where it comes from. 

KAYTE YOUNG: Chef B? prepared a few recipes for the small crowd gathered in the basement cafe of the Wells Library on the IU campus. He made calipistas, a dish from Sante Fe featuring squash, corn and peppers. He prepared a salad made from swap cabbage, otherwise known as hearts of palm. Swamp cabbage can still be foraged in the wild in parts of Florida, and is a historical ingredient in seminal, migasui, and kalusa tribal diets. Chef Bitsoie also made a dish featuring roasted pork tenderloin, served over a savory bean dish. 

FREDDIE BITSOIE: So, this is three bean ragu. And I know ragu is not a native term, but we in the culinary world have our own little secret code words. So, saying ragu means "stewed". Stewed beans is something that is pretty much throughout the native world. People will always have a different variation of it. We get some onions, some celery, and some carrots. Now if you were a French cook you would call this mericua. 

Okay so when you're making this particular dish you don't want a lot of caramelization happening. 

(sound of sizzling) 

So, we're adding the beans. But you don't want to mix too much because your beans are already cooked, alright? these are white beans, kidney beans, and black beans. We can use pintos if you'd like, but don't mix too much because it's gonna, it's just gonna get really mushy. And then I'll start the pork dish. 

Alright so we have some cayenne pepper, some new Mexican chili powder, some cumin, brown sugar, some dried mustard, and dried sage. All these flavors kind of blend together and form a nice rub. So, you're just gonna rub it in, you don't put it... I don't any oil on here because I use the oil in the pan to sear. 

Alright I apologize if your eyes get watery or if you start coughing. 

(sound of food sizzling in pan) 

Just get all four sides going. And then you put that in a preheated oven at 350. About 20 minutes, 20 to 25 minutes. So, your stew should be stewing up by now. This looks really nice. And as you can tell or probably can see, I rarely make sauce a priority for a lot of the foods that I do because I think it's important to understand that there are some sauces involved with some native foods, but I have to go that distinction between what French food is, and what native food is. With native food it's a little different kind of perspective, a little frame of mind. So, I try to purposely do without the sauce just to prove a point to people and I get to tidy them, my French chef friends will say "well there's no sauce". 

KAYTE YOUNG: Nobody in the room that day missed the sauce. Samples of all the dishes were passed around for everyone to taste. After the cooking demonstration, I asked him about the role of food. 

FREDDIE BITSOIE: Food is everything. Food can comfort. Food can bring people together. Food can even bring family together and most families don't like spending time together, and if food can do that, trust me, it can do a lot. But in all seriousness, food is actually I think the main conduit of storytelling, especially indigenous food. And I'm not referring to indigenous culture,

I’m talking about the foods that are indigenous to certain areas of the world. Not just the U.S. alone but throughout the world, because that's where that particular ingredient is from. That ingredient will always tell the story. And as long as that story is there, it becomes a part of people's culture. 

Food really has this power. 

KAYTE YOUNG: Chef Freddie Bitsoie was a guest of the IU Arts and Humanities Council as part of Indiana Remixed. We have his bean ragu recipe on our website, EarthEats.org. 

That's our show, thanks for listening. See you next week. 

(Earth Eats production support theme music)

RENEE REED: The Earth Eats team includes Eoban Binder, Chad Bouchard, Mark Chilla, Abraham Hill, Taylor Killough, Josephine McRobbie, Daniel Orr, The IU Food Institute, Harvest Public Media and me, Renee Reed.  Our theme music is composed by Erin Tobey and performed by Erin and Matt Tobey. Earth Eats is produced and edited by Kayte Young and our executive producer is John Bailey.

KAYTE YOUNG: Special thanks this week to Priscilla McCutcheon, Alex Chambers, and Freddie Bitsoie. 

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