Welcome to the SFA

Welcome to the Southern Foodways Alliance -- an institute of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture with headquarters at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Mississippi.

The Southern Foodways Alliance documents and celebrates the diverse food cultures of the American South. We set a common table where black and white, rich and poor -- all who gather-- may consider our history and our future in a spirit of reconciliation.

Registration

Registration is limited to thirty-five people and will sell out very quickly.

Cost for the trip is $165, $145 for SFA members. Please see the primary registration form for complete information.

Registrants for the symposium receive preferential status.

Rooms at the Alluvian require a separate registration, are priced at a discounted rate of $135, and may be reserved by dialing 866-600-5201 and asking for the special SFA rate.

In the event that the Alluvian sells out before you get a chance to book a room, try the Greenwood Best Western 662-455-5777.

Registration

Download the symposium registration form (610K) in Adobe PDF format. (Adobe Acrobat Reader required. )

Get Acrobat Reader.

Return form by
MAIL or FAX

Mail to:
Southern Foodways Symposium
Center for the Study of Southern Culture
P.O. Box 1848
Univeristy MS 38677 .

Or fax to:

662.915-5814

No phone or email registrations will be accepted.

Registration and payment for the Delta Divertissement is separate.

Mary Beth Lasseter will administer registration. Mary Beth may be reached at sfamail@olemiss.edu. SFA Director John T Edge may be reached at johnt@olemiss.edu.

Registration opens on July 10. No registration is confirmed until you have received e-mail or written notification from Mary Beth.

Individual registrations will be confirmed the week of August 23.

No refunds will be processed after September 1.

Southern Food in Black and White:
2004 Delta Divertissement

October 6-7, 2004

Celebrating the Delta Welcome Table

Join the SFA for our second Delta Divertissement. This overnight trip to Greenwood, Mississippi, highlights Delta food in black and white. Join us at the Welcome Table. Pay homage to possibilities of food as a facilitator of racial reconciliation. Take your measure of how far we have come. Ponder how far we have yet to go.

We will do more than explore the landscape and ponder big ideas. On day one, we stage a dinner and cooking demonstration. Join Ann Cashion, the Mississippi-born, James Beard Award-winning chef at Cashion’s Eat Place in Washington, D.C., for a fresh look at Delta eats. But that’s just the beginning. Of course, we’ll hear a bit of live blues. And gospel too. Sign up early. Only thirty-five spots are available, and they will go fast.

WEEKEND HIGHLIGHTS

Wednesday, October 6, 2004

• Drive to Greenwood (2 hours from Memphis, 1 1/2 hours from Oxford)

• Tour Viking Range Corporation’s Manufacturing Facilities Watch a stove being built from the ground up.

• The Delta Welcome Table
  Sample tamales from Giardina’s of Greenwood and Doe’s Eat Place of Greenville. Learn, from Mississippi Senator David Jordan, about a waiter named Booker Wright, who catalyzed the Movement.

• Dinner in the Delta
  Join Ann Cashion, a native of Mississippi — who named her Washington D.C. restaurant in tribute to a Delta haunt, Doe’s Eat Place — for a virtual tour of Mississippi eats. Learn technique from a James Beard Award-winning chef. Learn how Mississippi eats translate to a white tablecloth. Eat your fill.

• Shake a Leg and See a Flick at Club Ebony,
  B.B. King’s hometown juke in Indianola. View Joe York’s film, On Flavor, about catfish framer Ed Scott. Lend an ear to David Durham and the Ladies Choice Band. Expect downhome blues. Enjoy libations. Listen to David tell tales of rabbit hunting.

• Overnight at the Alluvian

Thursday, October 7, 2003

• Sausage and Biscuit and Cane Syrup Breakfast
  Come home to Mattie’s Café for biscuits, hand-patted sausage, and syrup pressed from ribbon cane. Invocation by Reverend McArthur McKinley of Little Zion M. B. Church. And to get you going, a little music by Duff Dorrough and friends.

• Delta Tour in Black And White
  Follow scholars Luther Brown and Lynn Linnemeier as we explore the Delta. We’ll learn the history of this fabled land – from the power of the mighty river that shaped the land, to the origins of the blues, to the struggle for civil rights. Among the stops will be Drew, where local folks are working to make the ideal of the Beloved Community a reality; and Ruleville, hometown of Fannie Lou Hamer. We’ll pay homage to Hamer in typical SFA fashion: In tribute to her efforts to establish a pig-breeding program for destitute Deltans, we’ll place a papier-mâché pig on her gravestone.

• Soul of Southern Cooking Lunch in Drew with Kathy Starr and Martha Foose. Gospel by the Holly Grove M. B. Church Choir. We will pay homage to Kathy Starr’s grandmother, Miz Bob, and savor the best sweet potato pie to ever cross a palate.

Delta People and Places to Know

The Alluvian is a luxury boutique hotel in Greenwood, Mississippi, set within walking distance of the Yazoo River and historic Cotton Row. Original art by Delta artists and a lively lobby scene make the Alluvian the epicenter of contemporary Delta culture.

Luther Brown is the founding director of the Delta Center for Culture and Learning at Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi.

Ann Cashion, a native of Jackson, is the chef and coowner of Cashion’s Eat Place in Washington, D.C. and the coowner of Johnny’s Half Shell, also in D.C. In 2004, the James Beard Foundation named her the best chef in the Mid-Atlantic.

David Durham and the Ladies Choice Band bring down the house every Sunday night at Club Ebony. Recently, the Mississippi Blues Society named him Bluesman of the Year.

Duff Dorrough of Ruleville, Mississippi, is a painter and musician. He now leads Duff and the Revelators. His latest album is Peace in the Lily of the Valley.

Martha Foose, a native of Pluto Plantation in Holmes County, is director of the Viking Range Cooking School. She and her husband, Donald, operate the Mockingbird Bakery in Greenwood.

Giardina’s, in business since 1936, is a local favorite for Italian-inflected Delta dishes like broiled Gulf pompano, hot tamales, and peerless onion rings.

Holly Grove Missionary Baptist Church in Drew is led by Reverend Jesse Gresham. His congregation established the Holly Grove Community Development Corporation to restore an historic Rosenwald school.

Senator David Jordan, a native of Greenwood, represents the Holmes, Leflore, and Tallahatchie Counties in the Mississippi senate. He is president of the Greenwood Voter’s League.

Lynn Linnemier, a graduate student in Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi, is an accomplished artist. Her academic work focuses upon African Americans as depicted in stereographic photography.

Reverend McArthur McKinley preaches to the congregation at Little Zion M. B. Church, where the choir shakes the walls every first and third Sunday.

Mattie Smith, a native of Minter City, Mississippi, is proprietor of Mattie’s Cafe in Greenwood. Her fried chicken is legendary, and so are her biscuits.

Kathy Starr, a native of Hollandale, Mississippi, is the author of The Soul of Southern Cooking. She is one of the fifty founders of the SFA.