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.

Alabama in Black and White

Fourth Annual SFA Field Trip
Alabama in Black and White
Birmingham, Alabama, June 4-6, 2004

The Southern Foodways Alliance met in Birmingham, Alabama to celebrate racial reconciliation through food. We gathered in the crucible of the Civil Rights Movement, for a weekend of conversations and presentations and libations commemorating the 40 th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

We feasted on a Lazy Susan Supper of barbecue and biscuits and greens and sipped wines from South Africa, curated by the Palm Wine Society. We barrelled through the Alabama countryside, bound for the Freedom Creek Blues Festival where Willie King and friends celebrated interracial bonds through down home blues and great home cooking. Southerners of different hues and hometowns returned to Birmingham and embraced a city of renewed hope, no longer shackled by Jim Crow.

For each Field Trip, we now execute an oral history project or commission a down-and-dirty film that gives greater context to our explorations. In 2004, Joe York shot this documentary on Willie King, a bluesman, activist, and farmer from Aliceville, Alabama. 

Highlights

FRIDAY
Take a Seat at Birmingham's Welcome Table

After a breakfast prepared by Goren “Dawg” Avery and Verba Ford, we walked to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. Attendants were treated to a special briefing by Frye Gaillard, author of Cradle of Freedom: Alabama and the Movement that Changed America . Along with Odessa Woolfolk, founder of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, Galliard put the exhibits in context and frame the weekend by explaining the impact of the public accommodations clause of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

We lunched at Highlands Bar and Grill, Frank Stitt's landmark restaurant. Stitt is a founder of the SFA and a much-heralded interpreter of Southern foods. His Highlands Meat & Three featured trout with country ham and redeye gravy, creamy grits, fried green tomatoes, and peas with snaps. On hand to pour wines of South Africa -- yes, you read that right -- was Jerome Crawford of Grassroots Wine and founder of the Palm Wine Society, one of the oldest African American wine groups in the country.

Following lunch we convened a panel discussion featuring Stitt; Martha Hawkins, proprietor of Martha's Place in Montgomery; and Clayton Sherrod, local culinary entrepreneur. A lively discussion focused upon recollections of their mentors as well as upon the ongoing struggle to operate public spaces where people of all races freely congregate and celebrate.

That night, we feasted on a Lazy Susan Supper, served in the soaring lobby at the heart of the Southern Progress corporate campus. Five years ago this summer, at a meeting in this very space, a diverse group of fifty founded the Southern Foodways Alliance. In commemoration, we spun Lazy Susans loaded down with the bounty of our farms and pass platters of barbecue smoked by the good folks at Jim ‘N Nick's. Ribs slathered with sauce. Shoulder wreathed in hickory smoke. Ethereal cheese biscuits.

Though we gathered to celebrate what the modern South has forged, we did not lose sight of our past. At Friday's diner, we honored at the dinner will be the women and men who fed the Civil Rights Movement, the church cooks who baked casseroles and stacked sandwiches to fuel the marchers. Our evening reached its zenith when a gospel group took the stage, singing the freedom songs that brought the marchers of the movement to their feet.

SATURDAY
Freedom Riders en route to Freedom Creek

We began with a true eye-opener. Charles Moore, a native of Tuscumbia, Alabama, who chronicled the pivotal events of the Civil Rights Movement, showed striking photographs from his book, Powerful Days .

By ten or so, we boarded buses for a Freedom Rider outing to Aliceville, Alabama, home to Willie King's Freedom Creek Festival. The drive took one and three-quarter hours or so. On board to give context to our journey was historian Frye Gaillard and Colonel Stone Johnson, who led the 1961 rescue of a besieged band of Freedom Riders in Anniston, Alabama.

Waiting on us in Aliceville was be, among others, Scott Barton of Voyage in New York City; John Currence of City Grocery in Oxford, Mississippi; John Fleer of the Inn at Blackberry Farm in Walland, Tennessee; and Chris Hastings of Hot and Hot Fish Club in Birmingham. They joined in arms with local cooks to feed treats like Conecuh County sausage and sweet tea-brined fried chicken. And they fed the crowds who gather to hear down home blues and celebrate racial reconciliation and social justice.

Proceeds raised by the sale of their good cooking benefited Willie King's work with the Rural Members Association, a local not-for-profit dedicated to community-building through the preservation and promotion of African American folk culture.

For those few who depart the festival on the first shuttle at 4:00, we arranged dinner in Birmingham. But the great majority came home when things simmered down at Freedom Creek.

SUNDAY
You're on your own. For those inclined to attend a religious service, we provided directions and entrée. Among the nearby houses of worship is Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, where four little girls lost their lives in a 1963 bombing. When that collection plate comes around, dig deep, but please know that, on your behalf, the SFA will also make a contribution to the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.

SPONSORS

Glory Foods
Glory Foods of Columbus, Ohio, is a manufacturer and distributor of conveniently prepared, slow-simmered and seasoned Southern-style canned vegetables; frozen entrees and side dishes; and fresh-cut bagged vegetables. All are inspired by Southern recipes and traditions.

We support this field trip in honor of our company founder, the late Bill Williams, who was committed to enhancing the presence of African Americans in the food industry.

Jim ‘'N Nick's Bar B Q
Jim 'N Nick's Bar-B-Q of Birmingham passionately believes that Southern hospitality celebrated over a table of food, fresh from the hickory pit and fresh from the garden, represent the very best in Southern culture. Sharing that belief with you is what we love to do! Toward that end, we are proud to be the lead underwriter of the SFA oral history initiative.

Southern Progress
A leader in lifestyle information and products, Southern Progress Corporation publishes Southern Living, Cooking Light, Health, Coastal Living, Cottage Living, Southern Accents, Progressive Farmer, and Sunset magazines, and books through Oxmoor House, Leisure Arts, and Sunset Books. Southern Progress is a Birmingham-based subsidiary of Time Inc.

White Lily
For more than a century, White Lily, the premier miller of pure, soft winter wheat, has supplied the cooks of the South with flour for biscuits, cakes, and piecrusts. In 2003, we introduced a line of grits, produced with the same attention to detail and heritage.

White Lily is committed to nurturing Southern food traditions and welcomes the opportunity to partner, once again, with the Southern Foodways Alliance.