Hey friends, I want to just send out a brief letter and story while I chow down my catfish and potato salad that I’m balancing on my knee and holding the computer on the other. I felt so proud of the rice on my plate that was soaked in tomatoes and onions I’m wanting to hold on to each flavor before it goes on to nourish my body. I’m eating food that survived a horrific past, recipes that have influenced the world but most importantly fed a community.
Okay so boom long story short, It’s February 22, 1797 It’s your 65th birthday, and your feet are tapping to the upbeat sound of a fast bow dragging back and forth on violin strings. You’re the president of the united states of america, you’re an enslaver, and you will spend your birthday and years to come looking for a chef who disappeared during your jubilation of birth, there is another man running away looking to be re-born.
Hercules Posey was a world-renowned chef, he was Black he had great style, and people often described him as well dressed, he sold leftovers and used the money to purchase luxurious items and clothing, he stood out, he was famous, and he was enslaved. His enslaver— george washington.
I could dig deep into the exhausting work that Hercules’ hands met and how he was summoned back and forth from a plantation and to the president’s house to serve a craft that white society would only accept under conditions of the artist being enslaved.
Our calendars reveal that it is president’s day, the public holiday is to celebrate america’s founding slave owners.
We celebrate a founding father of American culinary traditions and culture. And that his legacy has been sprinkled all over American kitchens.
I don’t know why today, I am emotional about food traditions and about oral history, It could be because the progress we’ve made in america feels like an old trick. Black people were never supposed to make it this far into the future, and because of that, we must remember that with any progress it will come with the erasure of Blackness.
Not only did our traditional recipes come here by way of the water but I can walk into a Black-owned restaurant and order it. I think I’m emotional because just like our food that has been categorized as unhealthy, not refined, that false descriptor is an attempt to reduce our culinary art, it comes from a white perspective of the historical dedication to the erasure of Black tradition, Black stories, and Black history. I think about all the Black restaurants that are no longer here due to gentrification. I think of the endless battle we have fought to preserve tradition and I think about how that is continued with every art we find space in.
For example literature— when we see politicians ban our stories, our books our history, we must remember that anti-literacy laws birthed this idea into the present. These laws in the past were put in place to make it illegal for enslaved people to read or write and we’re seeing them again.
And just like food, books have the power to stretch the imagination it has the power to spread from one person to the other it has the power to create community and also rebellion.
During slavery the food the enslaved would eat was rationed, this was intentional to make sure the enslaved had enough to live, yet not strong enough to rebel. With reading this same way of control is applied, any knowledge you could get from pages in a book was forbidden, if we could read or write there is a possibility to challenge the state and institution of slavery.
With our current issues, we tend to make it a very political fight between Democrats and conservatives. But we’re forgetting every move made is a Black issue. It’s a fight that Black people have to fight and have been for centuries. The influence of our foods, oysters, braised duck, and black-eyed peas was ridiculed now it has new faces representing it, our books our lectures our poetry are banned and I’m waiting to see when different hands type it out will it then be allowed to exist?
With america’s legacy of restrictions, laws, and murder, let’s remember this all stems from america’s founding slave owners it started with a president that had human property.
Shoutout out to the past present and future that despite attempts of erasure, we will find freedom in the food community and knowledge.
Oh and Hercules? george never found him. Hercules Ceaser changed his name to Posey and he spent his last few years of freedom in New York City. I hope it was spent surrounded by sophisticated meals, like steamed fish, baked mac and cheese, and some rice, because that is the only way to celebrate a long weekend in February.
Go celebrate Hercules, and eat !
-C