road trip, south louisiana style

two words: boudin map. now pack your toothbrush, water the lawn, gas up the car and go!

an interview with john t. edge

on a rainy friday morning last fall, fifty or so campers climbed off the bus in east tennessee to stroll through a hillside graveyard. we grumbled a bit as we sought the tombstone of tennessee’s most famous son. a few hundred yards up the path, someone spied the granite stone flanked by a pair of white chairs, under which whiskey maker jack daniel has lain for the last 95 years. it wasn't yet 10 am, so no one dared to take a pull from a bottle of old no. 7, or pour an offering on mr. jack’s grave. instead, bellies still full from the greasy breakfast we'd downed at silver sands, one of nashville’s soul food mainstays, we trudged on to lynchburg, where, an hour later, we ate again.

members of the southern foodways alliance, the organization behind the weekend-long camp nashville foray, don’t merely dine: they feast, they gorge, they gobble down food, savoring every mouthful as if they were seated on death row and indulging in that final meal. if they’re not lifting their forks to their lips, or chewing, or swallowing, or politely swabbing their chins with a napkin so they can begin the ritual again, they’re discussing food – meals past, present, and future are fair game, as are chefs, cookbooks, infinite sources of bacon and heirloom tomatoes, and the whereabouts of the region’s best barbecue shacks, which if you’re taking notes, exist on only the most out-of-the-way gravel roads.

the group on this camp nashville excursion was a cultured bunch:food writers john egerton, rachel lawson, and jim meyers are along for the ride, along with billy allin, a chef at decatur, georgia’s watershed restaurant, the entire corporate staff of jim n nicks barbecue chain, and a ragtag cloche of college professors, cooking enthusiasts, southern culture buffs, and hardcore foodies.

we were all tuned into one man – SFA director john t. edge, who happily led his fellow campers into battle, delivering mouthwatering edicts on fried chicken, pulled pork shoulder, and meat-and-three restaurants with the aplomb of a true believer.

“like music, food is a big part of how we define ourselves,” said edge, who launched a southern food symposium at the university of mississippi while he was a graduate student in southern studies in the late 1990s.

“our mission,” he told me, “is really straightforward: to document and celebrate the diverse food cultures of the american south.”

under edge’s leadership – and with the assistance of associate director mary beth lassiter, oral historian amy evans, and nearly 1000 individual and corporate members – the SFA, which operates under the aegis of the center for the study of southern culture at the university of mississippi, has evolved into a program that expands social consciousness as well as waistlines.

“people who come to our events quickly realize that we’re offering an entry to bigger issues, whether it’s volunteer work or discussions of race,” said edge, pointing to projects like the rebuilding of willie mae’s scotch house, a new orleans landmark that was destroyed by hurricane katrina.

“what makes southern food so distinctive is that interplay between black and white,” he said. “america’s interest in regional food is spiking. in the future, I think other distinctive foodways – like new england, and the tex-mex border – will likely develop.”

although the SFA has recently turned its discerning eye on athens, georgia, apalachicola, florida, and the tamale trails of the mississippi delta, for us, the focus was on middle tennessee – after spending an afternoon touring lynchburg’s jack daniel’s distillery, it was back to nashville, where an endless bounty awaited.

first, campers met at a small local art gallery, the site of a kickoff party for the east nashville tomato art festival, where we were feted with catfish BLTs, kegs of yazoo beer, and pureed tomato popsicles. saturday morning, everyone reconvened at the station inn, where the sounds of last night’s bluegrass jam still hung in the air, to celebrate the artistry of local fried sweet potato pie king e.w. mayo. hangovers were plentiful, but the starchy, crumbly goodness that fell from mayo’s worn fingers into the fryer offered the perfect cure. filmmaker joe york screened a documentary short detailing the pie man’s life, and then edge bestowed him with a tabasco guardian of the tradition award, which, along with the keeper of the flame award, is the SFA’s highest honor.

“the things we do have an academic backbone,” edge explained, “but we’re committed to producing events and scholarship that are a pleasure to be a part of. while I’m deeply and profoundly dedicated to the people we celebrate, like mr. mayo, I don’t give a damn about the pretense and pomp that goes along with so much of the food world.”

“we honor southern foodways by recording oral histories, by making documentary films, and by staging events at which people learn about southern food, and drink and eat the hell out of it!”

(excerpted from chowing down on the south, a piece originally published in paste magazine.

an interview with john francis ficara

think of the deep south, and you’ll imagine fluffy white cotton fields, vast plains of peanuts, and shimmering catfish ponds as far as the eye can see. although hoop skirts and flour sack shirts are long extinct, along with the majority of sharecroppers, squatters, and migrant pickers, farming is still a big business below the mason-dixon line.

even as suburban sprawl encroaches pastureland and strip malls stand on former feedlots, small farms persevere.

here in memphis, if you drive east, past wolfchase galleria, you’ll see brown daubs of land destined for corn seed, soybeans, or hay. head north, towards millington, to count heads of cattle that graze on acreage sandwiched between developments, or travel south of the state line, where cotton remains king.

year by year, however, the number of family farms are shrinking. reality checks like bad weather and high-interest loans, coupled with the daily rigors and stress of rural life, are taking toll at a record pace. younger generations are bypassing plowing for college and white-collar careers. dispirited, frustrated farmers are selling out to giant corporations, hanging up their overalls, and walking away from the land.

photojournalist john ficara spent four years capturing the plight of modern-day farmers for his book, black farmers in america, which was published by the university press of kentucky.

“family farming is really a way of life – it’s not a typical nine-to-five job, and now we’re losing the tradition,” ficara says flatly. “it’s too cost prohibitive. ultimately, all family farms are going to be really gone – they’ll be taken over by corporations.”

“if a farm is doing okay, children are more likely to take over,” he notes. “when farmers are struggling, and barely holding it together, the next generation looks at their fathers and grandfathers and say, ‘I can drive a truck or work a day job,’ rather than go through the hardships and headaches of running a farm.”

while this plight affects all family farmers, says ficara, african american farms are going out of business at a much faster rate – four times as quickly as their white counterparts. “at their peak in the 1920s, there were 2.2 million black farmers under the age of 25 in the US,” he reports. “there are less than 18,000 now.”

The legacy of african american farmers goes back further than william tecumseh sherman’s promise of forty acres and a mule, ficara says, explaining that, “as slaves were freed during emancipation, one of the only things they knew how to do really well was farm. Their quest to get land was essential – it was their way to have a stake in this country’s future.”

yet from the beginning, he states, discrimination and racism have stunted the success rate of black farms. in his book, ficara documents both the daily labor of black farmers, and their strife at the hands of the USDA, currently a defendant in myriad legal affidavits and class action lawsuits.

some of the images in black farmers In america – shot with a medium-format camera that yields lush, black-and-white portraits – are timeless. marion county, florida farmers john and evelena burton stand, hands clasped, in front of a loamy spread, their lined faces perfectly illustrating their lifelong toil. charles and anne williams are caught stooped-over, fistfuls of green beans filling their buckets, a pose familiar to anyone who’s ever handpicked a harvest. jerry singleton kicks dust into the camera lens, following tat, a plowing mule, with his head bent down, counting the furrows. other pictures are irrefutably modern – like the portrait of north carolina farmer harold wright, who welds a piece of broken machinery while clad in a pair of pleated khakis, or the image of alabaman jessie carver, who wears a striped polo shirt and a pair of running shoes with his faded overalls.

“all of the farmers were very open,” says ficara, who took an estimated 7,000 photographs during the project.

“one family in southwest georgia was in transition – the father had a heart attack, the farm was going downhill, and he was trying to get his son to take over. the son, a high school graduate, wanted to get a loan to upgrade the machinery and start replanting.”

“I accompanied them through the whole process,” he recalls, “and I saw first-hand the dilemma of being denied monies, even if it was a prosperous farm at one point. on any small farm, a lot of extended family members are involved, making jellies and jams, boiling peanuts, running a roadside stand, or selling produce at a farmer’s market. most people talk about tangible things, like profits and land loss, but they don’t touch on the human terms. traveling around and talking to farmers, I realized that something greater is being lost.”

“while intentions might be good at a federal level, at the county level, blacks are still at the back of the bus,” he says.