SFA | Southern Foodways Symposium Themes

The fourth annual Southern Foodways Symposium was October 25-28, 2001, on the campus of the University of Mississippi. This year we explore connections between the working of the land and the joys of the table.

For 2001, we expanded the symposium by a day. On Thursday afternoon, Jennifer Abraham of Louisiana State University conducted an oral history workshop geared toward the collection of food memories. The workshop was free of charge to the first twenty registrants. That night, we gathered for our first meal of the symposium: fried Mississippi quail with rice and gravy, prepared by Amy Crockett of Ajax Diner and John Currence of City Grocery.

As with previous symposia, this event provided an opportunity for cooks, chefs, food writers, and inquisitive eaters alike to come to a better understanding of Southern cuisine and Southern culture. Lectures, held in Barnard Observatory, the restored antebellum headquarters of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, were complemented by a series of informal lunches, served in the sylvan grove at the heart of the Ole Miss campus.

Featured foods included "battling Brunswick stews," an interstate rivalry with Tim Patridge of Morris Brown College in Atlanta, Georgia, and David "Chunk" Gibson of the Lawrenceville, Virginia, Volunteer Fire Department. On Friday, we feasted on shoebox lunches prepared by Ashley McGee of Panther Burn, Mississippi, while Saturday's midday repast showcased a sampling of more modern Southern fare from Kathy Cary of Lily's in Louisville, Kentucky.

Evening events included author readings, regional food and drink tastings, a catfish dinner with appetizers from Susan Goss and Robert Stehling, and a street dance hosted by Ed Dye and the Yambilee Orchestra. Festivities closed on Sunday with a biscuit brunch and garden sermon.

Host for the event was the Southern Foodways Alliance at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. Contributors to our efforts include Bottletree Bakery, Ajax Diner, City Grocery, Labrot & Graham, Lodge Manufacturing, the Oxford Tourism Council, and Southern Comfort. Primary sponsors of the Southern Foodways Symposium were Viking Range and White Lily.

ARTWORK: Potlikker (36 x 39 inches) by Mississippian Lea Barton, from her series about the American South, Paradox in Paradise. The painting was sold at auction during the symposium.

Speakers and Chefs

Jennifer Abraham is a folklorist with the T. Harry Williams Center for Oral History at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.

Bill and Michael Best are principals in the Sustainable Agriculture Mountain Center of Berea, Kentucky.

Kathy Cary is the chef and owner of Lilly's restaurant in Louisville, Kentucky, where she fuses traditional Kentucky ingredients with French techniques.

Johnnie Clark is a farmer and activist based in New Orleans, Louisiana. He sells his mirlitons and sweet potatoes at the Crescent City Farmers Market.

Amy Crockett, from Coldwater, Mississippi, was the sous chef at City Grocery in Oxford for five years before coming on board as the chef at Ajax Diner.

John Currence got his start at Bill Neal's Crook's Corner in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He is the chef and owner of City Grocery in Oxford.

Pete Daniel is a curator at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., and author of, most recently, Lost Revolutions: The South in the 1950s.

Ed Dye is a journeyman musician of great renown, relocated from Nashville, Tennessee, to Oxford.

Damon Lee Fowler, author of Classical Southern Cooking, is vice-president of the SFA. He lives in Savannah, Georgia.

Sarah Fritschner is an author as well as the food editor at The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky. Since 1990 she has promoted local farm products through markets and festival events.

David Gibson is a veteran Brunswick stewmaster and member of the Lawrenceville, Virginia, Volunteer Fire Department.

Susan Goss is the executive chef at Zinfandel in Chicago, Illinois, where she celebrates American regional cooking and features an all-American wine and spirits list.

Karen Hess, of New York City, is a culinary historian specializing in Southern cooking, especially the African contributions to those cuisines. Among her books is The Carolina Rice Kitchen.

Lynn Hewlett, a native of Taylor, Mississippi, is a champion barbecue pitmaster who owns and operates one of the South's most fabled catfish houses, Taylor Grocery.

Samuel Bowers Hilliard, a retired professor of geography at Louisiana State University, is author of the seminal work Hogmeat and Hoecake: Food Supply in the Old South.

Lu Ann Jones is an assistant professor of history at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina. Her book, "Mama Learned Us to Work": Women, Reform, and the Farm Economy in the Rural New South, will be published in 2002.

Sarah Belk King, of Richmond, Virginia, is an editor at Bon Appetit and has written a number of books including, Around the Southern Table.

Toni Tipton Martin is co-author of the book A Taste of Heritage. She was the first African American editor of a major daily newspaper. She is the president of the SFA.

Lee May writes on gardening and food for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and is author of In My Father's Garden, a memoir.

Ashley Hykes McGee is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America. She now teaches cooking classes and tends a plot of soil in Panther Burn, Mississippi.

Tim Patridge, a foodways scholar and researcher, is the director of Food and Beverage at Morris Brown College in Atlanta, Georgia. He is an SFA board member.

Tom Rankin is the director of the Center for Documentary Studies Center at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Among his books is Sacred Space: Photographs from the Mississippi Delta.

Glenn Roberts, a veteran of three decades in the restaurant business, is the proprietor of Anson Mills in Columbia, South Carolina.

Marie Rudisill is the author of numerous books, including Fruitcake: Memories of Truman Capote and Sook.

Ed Scott was the first African American catfish farmer in the Mississippi Delta. Now retired, he lives on a farm near the town of Drew.

Robert Stehling is chef and proprietor of Hominy Grill in Charleston, South Carolina. He learned to cook under the tutelage of Bill Neal, the late chef and cookbook author.

Charles Reagan Wilson is the director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. His most recent book is Judgment and Grace in Dixie: Southern Faiths from Faulkner to Elvis.