As a Black woman, I see a legacy of abundance on the holiday table

The weighty transition into winter coincides with rapidly darkening days and the delight of dense root vegetables, greens and stews. This is a signal that the familiar fellowship of family feasts can’t be far behind.

The integral relationship to food and our lived experiences range from the abundance — such as seasonal bounties, gatherings of friends and loved ones and family recipes passed on through stories and tattered index cards — to scarcity, acres, small and large, battling against the summer’s heat, droughts and sporadic weather patterns.

Both extremes are necessary components of the historical and cultural makeup of Black, country folks that spark the soul of our make-do spirit. However the reality of food insecurity remains at the heart of the holidays for far too many.

Black, country people have grappled with food, land and climate issues for generations, providing warning and remedy in our own unique ways. It’s sometimes unspoken, communicated through the ways we “put up” vegetables to conserve for times when the bounty is less generous. It’s communicated through oral histories told by elders and by the changing shapes of the landscape itself.

Climate change was even expressed in the more frequent aches and pains in the very bones of our Black elders. Gramma’s “bursitis” acting up meant nothing less than a storm brewing. The prideful determination of Black mothers with the daily task of making something out of nothing when cupboards are more bare than years prior is indeed a familiar practice to many.

We have historically cast our plight in the wider net of a larger community of women who share the experience of food insecurity and scarcity knowing, collectively, we have enough.

In the spring of 1968, during Dr. King’s tour of poverty-stricken areas of the rural South, a Black mother approached him, painstakingly confessing her struggle with feeding her children. A few months later, in the summer of that same year, as a precursor to his “Poor People’s Campaign”, Dr. King seamlessly connected the dots between this mother’s hunger and the systemic issues within the U.S.

As a Black mother from a rural community who has been working on the periphery of agriculture for well over a decade, I am leaning into the lineage of these Black mothers and the intersectional response that Dr. King offered. What it means to be food insecure is ripe with intangibles. Food insecurity is as much about the worry — the psychological toll of not having enough food — as it is about scarce holiday tables. It is about the spiritual toll — the loss of the will to celebrate and fellowship, a central part of our holiday experience, our cultural survival, and mental well-being.

I also often find myself in spaces where I am one of a few, whether a country girl in urban farming spaces among city folks who interrogate my peculiar cadence, or a Black woman in white rural spaces where my experience is tokenized or completely misunderstood.

Similarly, as a queer woman, my family construct may not be the same as the depiction of the supper tables of Black America during the 1960s. No matter the makeup, food is and has always been a part of our cultural currency that connects us to our legacy. There is an innate pridefulness, an audacity, in our shared lineage that has kept me skeptically involved in advocating for a different vision. Our flawed systems will only shift as much as the institution that created them allows.

However, legacy is about what is owed, which is my impetus for continuing to hold systems that have long disenfranchised Black and rural communities to account. I find reassurance in knowing that our tradition is determined by our choice to belong to the larger story, one that can only be written by those who have experienced the beauty and the struggle within it.

Even though food insecurity remains, our recipes, our ways, and the power that lies in our innovation and collective purpose ensures that with the changing seasons and passage of time our legacy remains abundant.