University of Oregon CH7 The Chitlin Circuit & Soul Food History Paper What is “Soul Food,” and is it solely for African-Americans? Explain. Answer this qu

University of Oregon CH7 The Chitlin Circuit & Soul Food History Paper What is “Soul Food,” and is it solely for African-Americans? Explain. Answer this question in 300 words and then provide another question to be asked related to the same topicMake sure to use the file attached as the source. ch
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h it l i n c i rc u it
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Copyright © 2008. Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
The Origins and Meanings of
Soul and Soul Food
Born and raised in Augusta, Georgia, singer, songwriter, and choreographer James Brown is considered the undisputed father of soul. In his autobiography, he writes that by 1962 soul “meant a lot of things—in music
and out. It was about the roots of black music, and it was kind of a pride
thing, too, being proud of yourself and your people.” He adds, “Soul music
and the civil rights movement went hand in hand, sort of grew up together.”1 Before the civil rights movement, black entertainers like Brown,
B. B. King, Ray Charles, Al Green, Gladys Knight, Nina Simone, and Aretha
Franklin made their living on the “chitlin circuit,” a string of black-owned
honky-tonks, nightclubs, and theaters. The circuit wove throughout the
Southeast and Midwest, stretching from Nashville to Chicago and into New
York. Performers would often do consecutive one-night stands, frequently
more than eight hundred miles apart. The routine went: drive for hours,
stop, set up the bandstand, play for five hours, break down the bandstand,
and drive for several more hours. On the road, performers often settled for
sandwiches from the colored window of segregated restaurants until they
arrived at the next venue.2
On the circuit were the New Era in Nashville; Evan’s Bar and Grill in
Forestville, Maryland (just outside of the District of Columbia); the Royal
in Baltimore; Pittsburgh’s Westray Plaza, the Hurricane, and Crawford
Grill; and New York’s Club Harlem and Small’s Paradise, to name just
a few venues. The chitlin circuit was crucial to black artists like James
Brown and B. B. King because it offered the only way for them to perform
for their fans during a period when the white media did not cover and
Opie, Frederick. Hog and Hominy : Soul Food from Africa to America, Columbia University Press, 2008. ProQuest
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122  • t h e c h i t l i n c i rc u i t
Negro bunkhouse, Childersburg, Ala., May 1942. Farm Security Administration, Office of War Information, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division,
LC-USF34-082813-C.
Copyright © 2008. Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
f i g u r e 7 .1
mainstream venues did not book black artists. The entertainers called it
the chitlin circuit because club owners sold chitlins and other soul food
dishes out of their kitchens. Early in her career, Gladys Knight performed
in a house band on the circuit, playing at “roadside joints and honkytonks across the South,” she recalled. “No menus. No kitchens. Just a grizzly old guy selling catfish nuggets, corn fritters, or pig ear sandwiches in a
corner.”3 The circuit went beyond small hole-in-the-wall clubs, however.
Elaborate African American–operated theaters like the Regent in Washington, D.C., the Uptown in Philadelphia, the Apollo in New York, the Fox
in Detroit, and the Regal in Chicago were big-time venues considered part
of the circuit.4 These theaters did not have kitchens that sold food, but
savvy African American entrepreneurs established places nearby where
you could purchase good-tasting meals.
Various soul food traditions cropped up in connection with the circuit.
In New York, for example, soul food was eating fried chicken and waffles—perhaps early on a Sunday morning after spending all night listening
to bebop jazz musicians such as Miles Davis and Thelonius Monk. The
legend goes that this northern soul food tradition began when artists in
New York ordered chicken for breakfast after missing dinner on Saturday
Opie, Frederick. Hog and Hominy : Soul Food from Africa to America, Columbia University Press, 2008. ProQuest
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t h e c h i t l i n c i rc u it • 123
Copyright © 2008. Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
f i g u r e 7.2 Negro café, Washington, D.C., July–November 1937. Farm Security Administration, Office of War Information, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division,
LC-USF34-008544-D.
night because they were performing and ordered waffles as the hot bread
to eat with the fried chicken. Similarly, at Kelly’s restaurant in Atlantic
City, the queen of soul, Aretha Franklin, remembered after-hours meals
of “hot sauced wings and grits for days.” Franklin also recalled that near
Chicago’s Regal Theater there was a “food stand, tucked a few doors away
from the theater, that served greasy burgers made with a spicy sausage in
the meat, topped with crispy fries, Lord, have mercy. The artists couldn’t
wait to get offstage to wolf down those burgers.”5 When performing in
northwest Washington, D.C., African American entertainers ate at Cecilia’s
Restaurant, conveniently located across the street from the Howard Theater. Harlem, the site of New York’s Odeon and the Apollo theaters, had a
bunch of restaurants: Grits ’n’ Eggs, Well’s Waffle House, the Bon Goo Barbecue, the Red Rooster, and Tillie’s Chicken Shack, among others. Most of
these restaurants had been open since the 1930s and 1940s. But nobody
called them soul food restaurants then.
It was in the 1960s that African American urban dwellers, first in the
Southeast and then in the Northeast, gradually made the transition from
talking about rock music (rhythm and blues) and southern food to calling
it soul music and soul food. In the face of the increasing ethnic diversity of
Opie, Frederick. Hog and Hominy : Soul Food from Africa to America, Columbia University Press, 2008. ProQuest
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124  • t h e c h i t l i n c i rc u i t
urban centers, soul became associated with African American culture and
ethnicity. People with soul had a down-home style that migrants from the
rural South could unite around. For this working class, composed predominantly of underemployed urban dwellers, soul made them members of an
exclusive group of cultural critics. Soul gave them insider status in a racist
society that treated them like outsiders, and it emerged as an alternative
culture that undermined white definitions of acceptability.6
Beginning with discussions in the 1960s and 1970s, soul was considered the cultural component of black power, the most visible black nationalist idea of the twentieth century. At its heart, soul is the ability to
survive and keep on keeping on despite racist obstacles to obtaining life’s
necessities. In the language of soul, the more you have been through and
survived, the more soul you have. Soul roots go back to the 1920s and the
Harlem Renaissance movement.
Copyright © 2008. Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
The Political Origins of Soul
The 1920s movement began after democratic struggles in Europe during
the post–World War I era failed to carry over and improve conditions for
blacks in the United States. Similarly, the black power and soul movements of the post–World War II era were, among other things, a response
to the limited gains made after the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown
vs. the Board of Education, the outlawing of school segregation, and the
civil rights movement that followed. Black power and soul in their various
manifestations, depending on the group, were rooted in the black revivalism of Malcolm X, the direct action protests as well as the political and
economic organizing campaigns of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC), and the armed resistance to police brutality of the
Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. In addition, militant African independence movements in the 1950s and 1960s stirred African Americans
to action, producing a new and “brilliant generation” of angry black intellectuals that rivaled those of the Harlem Renaissance.7
Both the urban riots that followed the assassinations of Medger Evers,
Martin Luther King, Jr., and several other important figures within the
civil rights movement in the 1960s and the failure of American liberalism
shaped the development of soul. In Report from Black America, published
in 1969, activist and civil rights strategist Bayard Rustin observed that
African Americans in the early 1960s “began to get Blackenized.” Black
power and soul proponents such as Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture),
H. Rap Brown, Amiri Baraka, and others called for “thinking black” and
Opie, Frederick. Hog and Hominy : Soul Food from Africa to America, Columbia University Press, 2008. ProQuest
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t h e c h i t l i n c i rc u it • 125
moving beyond the double consciousness outlined in W.  E.  B. Du Bois’s
classic book The Souls of Black Folk to a new, independent, proud black
identity. Rustin argues that soul was the cultural arm of the black power
movement that called for, among other actions, singing, talking, and eating
according to the African heritage of black people in America.8
In a 1967 article entitled “African Negritude—Black American Soul,”
published in the journal Africa Today, W. A. Jeanpierre argues that soul
is the same as African negritude. Both negritude and soul were political
and cultural concepts rooted in the values that informed black Americans
about African civilizations, black genius, and the things that made black
people across the globe unique. The difference between negritude and soul
was in their origins: elite African intellectuals, many of them living in Europe, created the idea of negritude; northern working-class urban African
Americans with southern roots created soul ideology, which subsequently
spread to more affluent northern black communities. From Jeanpierre’s
article, one can conclude that there is a class and regional formula to soul:
poor black folks have more soul than wealthier ones; urban black folks
have more soul than suburban black folks. In this formula, the more black,
poor, and urban you are, the more soul you have.9
Soul and soul food, according to one scholar, developed out of a larger black power project that called for creating black cultural expressions
different from white society.10 Oral interviews conducted with those
who lived through the civil rights and black power movements illustrate
this point. For example, Lamenta Crouch, a longtime educator in Prince
George’s County, Maryland, associates the term “soul food” with the black
power movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Crouch graduated from an
HBCU in Virginia in the 1960s and moved to Washington, D.C. She remembers black power in the metropolitan Washington area largely as a
black identity movement. Crouch says, “I can’t remember exactly the first
time that I heard it, but it was in the same era of black power, soul brother,
and all that business of having an identity that was uniquely ours.” She
adds, “It was during that era that the soul food term came up and I think
it was kind of like, ok this is ours. This is something we can claim is ours
that identifies us as a people and we [have] some value and we have something to contribute.”11
Clara Pittman observed that black power in northern California inspired
black people finally to stand up for their rights and “speak for themselves,”
openly expressing a pride in their unique African heritage and an awareness of the contributions they made to American society. During the 1960s
and 1970s, she was in her early twenties, just out of the Marine Corps, and
Opie, Frederick. Hog and Hominy : Soul Food from Africa to America, Columbia University Press, 2008. ProQuest
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126  • t h e c h i t l i n c i rc u i t
living in northern California (not far from Oakland where Bobby Seal and
Huey P. Newton started the Black Panther Party in 1966).12
In Westchester County, New York, black power did not have the kind
of popularity or influence it had in the District of Columbia and northern
California. Westchester residents born before the Depression had little to
no experience with black power. For example, Ella Barnett, born in 1915,
claimed “black power didn’t mean anything to me. It really didn’t make a
difference.”13 Margaret Opie and Sundiata Sadique, however, both Westchester activists born in the 1930s, had a very different interpretation of
the influence of black power in the county. Starting in the 1960s, Opie
became very involved in local, county, and national politics. She held positions such as membership chair of the Ossining NAACP and director of
the Center for Peace in Justice, which was started in Ossining and is now
a countywide organization located in the county seat in the city of White
Plains. She also held the position of director of the Ossining Economic
Opportunity Center (one of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty programs) and was a 1972 delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Miami representing Westchester County.14
Sundiata Sadique, formerly Walter Brooks, moved to Westchester County in 1963 from just across the Hudson River in nearby Rockland County.
After high school, he joined the U.S. Army, where he was a paratrooper in
the 101st Airborne. After his tour was up, Sadique spent a brief period in
Chicago, where the message of the Nation of Islam’s Elijah Muhammad
and the Fruit of Islam (all the adult male members of the Nation who
were trained in self-defense) attracted his attention. Before returning to
Rockland County, he became a member of both the Nation and the Fruit
of Islam. In Rockland, he served first as secretary of the Congress of Racial
Equality (CORE) and later became the chairman of the CORE chapter
there. He came to Ossining in 1967 with Bill Scott, the chairman of Rockland County’s CORE chapter. When Sadique first arrived in Ossining, he
took a job cutting hair at George Watson’s barbershop. From the town’s
only black barbershop he started recruiting and organizing blacks for both
the Nation and CORE, selling copies of the newspaper Malcolm X started
while he was a member of the Nation, Muhammad Speaks. (The photographer for the Nation of Islam, Bernard Jenkins, also lived in Ossining.)15
During the 1960s and 1970s, the Nation, CORE, and the Black Panthers all launched organizing efforts in Westchester County. The Nation,
an exclusively alternative black nationalist religious organization, had
better results than the overtly political organizing efforts of CORE and
the Black Panthers. Sadique and other members of the Nation living in
Opie, Frederick. Hog and Hominy : Soul Food from Africa to America, Columbia University Press, 2008. ProQuest
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t h e c h i t l i n c i rc u it • 127
Westchester County made the thirty-minute car or train trip to Harlem to
attend Malcolm X’s Temple No. 7. Elijah Muhammad assigned Malcolm to
New York to recruit the large number of blacks that lived in Harlem and
the greater New York area.16
In his early days, Malcolm and his lieutenants carried out their proselytizing efforts in front of the Theresa Hotel located next to the Chock Full
o’ Nuts Café at Seventh Avenue and 125th Street. Malcolm, a tall, handsome redhead, delivered his charismatic Black Nationalist critique of the
problems of black society and the solutions offered by Elijah Muhammad
standing on top of a wooden soapbox. In addition to his street-corner
oratory, Malcolm and his followers at Temple No. 7 operated several restaurants in Harlem and a black nationalist newspaper with a distribution
network that extended as far as the city of Peekskill in northern Westchester County. As Malcolm’s popularity increased, African Americans in
and around Harlem flocked to hear him preach. Malcolm remained the
minister in charge in Harlem until he left the Nation in 1964. Recruiting
efforts continued to go very well after Malcolm’s departure, however, as
evidenced by the establishment of a Nation of Islam temple and restaurant
in the lower Westchester County city of Mount Vernon.17
In contrast to the Nation, CORE first came to northern Westchester to
address problems within the local fire departments. In Peekskill, racist
members of the city’s full-time professional fire department denied African American firemen the right to ride on city fire trucks, forcing the men
to take taxis to fires. Similarly, racist members of the Ossining Volunteer
Fire Department practiced a policy of blackballing that shut out African
American volunteers. Despite its valiant efforts, CORE was unable to establish a local chapter in Ossining. The Black Panthers had similar organizing difficulties in northern Westchester.18
In the 1970s the Black Panthers established chapters in Chicago and
New York City. They also attempted to make inroads into Westchester
County with breakfast programs in poor black neighborhoods. In Ossining, however, where Sing Sing Prison was located, most African Americans viewed outsiders like CORE and the Black Panther organizers with
contempt, fear, and suspicion.19
The older generation of African Americans, most of them southern migrants like Ella Barnett, were politically very conservative and disagreed
with black power and black nationalism. Younger black folk feared law
enforcement officials. Sundiata Sadique recalls that when he moved to Ossining, fear of the police paralyzed many black residents. Young activists
like Margaret Opie, who became politically mobilized as members of the
Opie, Frederick. Hog and Hominy : Soul Food from Africa to America, Columbia University Press, 2008. ProQuest
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128  • t h e c h i t l i n c i rc u i t
NAACP in Westchester, simply did not trust outside political operatives
representing CORE and the Panthers. Maybe they suspected that they
might really be undercover agents.20
Back in the 1940s, Westchester County had become an unfriendly place
for black activists and the message of black power. The county had become like a police state, perhaps in response to the Peekskill Riots of 1949
and the communist hysteria surrounding the Rosenbergs’ execution at
Sing Sing Prison in1953. “This was like a prison town and a police state to
me when I started living here,” says Sundiata Sadique. “Black people were
very afraid of law enforcement. So I think it had something to do with the
prison, you know if you go back to the Rosenbergs when they saw that,
when they were electrocuted in Sing Sing and the kind of turnout of the
racist . . . so it took a while” to get black folks organized. Basically, all they
had in African American communities in the county was the NAACP.21
For many African Americans in the county, then, black power never made
significant inroads.
In general, black power never gained the popularity and mass appeal
of soul. Black power advanced soul ideology because it championed the
study of African culture and the development of a black consciousness.
It also encouraged Africa…
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